Some enterprise technology trends, like cloud computing and business intelligence, are sure to feature prominently next year, but others are harder to anticipate with any clarity. Jonathan Reichental, CIO of O'Reilly Media, predicts that social media, temporary staffing and conservative IT spending will also be in the top five considerations for CIOs in 2011.

The potential business benefits of social media capabilities are being demonstrated on an anecdotal basis these days. Reichental predicts that more enterprises will start coming up with strategies to apply capabilities such as crowdsourcing, collaborative virtual work spaces and social network analysis. However, these functions still won't be deeply integrated into systems next year, he writes.

IT contractors can expect to do well again next year because there will be ongoing reluctance to hire permanent, full-time employees, in Reichental's opinion. Rather than risk having to lay off staff down the road, IT departments are likely to continue relying heavily on temporary staff and outsourcers. What may be different from this year is that contracts may be of shorter duration. 

Reichental is not optimistic about a reversal of the current trend of conservative IT investment. "It's not the end of the world for CIOs," he writes, "but it does mean that more work must be applied to developing watertight business cases and for increasing the innovative use of technology."

For more:
- see Jonathan Reichental's post at O'Reilly Radar

Related Articles:
Gartner reveals annual IT predictions
Forecast for 2011's top tech trends