tech trends featured1)    Smart Phones Become Our Primary Personal Computer. The Mobile Web becomes a must-have capability. The vast majority of mobile phones sold globally in 2011 will have a browser, making the mobile phone our primary computer that is with us 24/7 and signaling a profound shift in global computing. Changing is no longer a profitable option, as rapid growth will come from using this shift to transform how you market, sell, communicate, collaborate, educate, train, and innovate.

2)    Tablet Computers take off in 2011 as businesses discover the unique advantages tablets bring to sales and service employees by providing custom apps on a computer that’s small, but with a large enough screen to carry and view anywhere and while standing or sitting.

3)    Enterprise Level Apps will drive rapid corporate growth in both smart phones and tablets, and will be used at first for sales and service support and then move to purchasing, logistics, just-in-time training, and much more.

4)    Enhanced Location Awareness will accelerate the number of business-to-consumer apps for smart phones and tablets that will take geo-social marketing and sales to a new level and rapidly grow in 2011 and beyond.

5)    Web TV Using Apps will get a major post in the marketplace in 2011, creating a major shift in home viewing. Ever wonder how you could have over 500 cable or satellite channels and nothing to watch? You didn’t have apps on your TV allowing you to personalize the experience. This is the beginning of a major shift that will take place in living rooms globally.

6)    Many App Stores for all smart phone, tablet, and television operating systems (Android, Blackberry, Windows, and others) will take off in 2011, creating an abundant distribution and sales ecosystem for all. This will cement the revolution versus evolution that apps software represents.

7)    Mobile Widgets Will Become the Apps for Our Laptops when stores like the new Apple Store spawn another trend in 2011. Widgets can also be placed on sites such as Facebook and other social networking sites, and are used for virtual marketing.

8)    3D Displays for Smart Phones and Tablets will be the breakthrough that will drive wide-scale consumer acceptance of 3D computing. 3D Computing for the enterprise will grow rapidly for military, medicine, fashion, architecture, and entertainment applications.

9)    Visual Communications takes video conferencing to a new level in 2011 with programs like SKYPE and others giving us video communication on phones, tablets, and our home television. Visual Communications will become a main relationship-building tool for businesses of all sizes.

10) eBooks, eNewspapers, and eMagazines Reach the Tipping Point in 2011 due to the abundance of smartphones with readable displays, tablets that provide a full color experience, and publishers providing apps that give a better than paper experience by including cut, copy, paste, print, and multimedia capabilities. In addition, eBook readers will have high quality with a low enough price to bring in the masses.

11) Cloud Computing will be embraced by business in 2011 and represents a major shift in how companies obtain and maintain software and computing capacity. The public has been using public clouds for some time now—think about when you use Google or Apple’s Mobile Me. Now we will see more private clouds with customers like Flextronics, Siemens, Accenture, and many others using the cloud to cut costs in human resources and sales management functions.

12) Software as a Service (SaaS) grows rapidly for small as well as large companies in 2011 with many new players in many new business process categories helping companies cut costs as they provide access to powerful software programs and the latest technology without having the expense of a large IT staff and time-consuming expensive upgrades.

13) Cloud Computing as a Service will increasingly be offered to companies needing their own private clouds but who do not want to build the infrastructure.

14) Virtualization of Storage, Desktops, Applications, and Networking will see continued acceptance and growth by both large and small businesses as virtualization security improves. We will begin to see the virtualization of processing power, allowing mobile devices to have supercomputer capabilities.

15) Social Software for Business takes off with applications to enhance relationships, collaboration, networking, social validation, and more.

16) Wireless Machine-to-Machine applications such as two-way meter reading, surveillance, vending machine, and point-of-sale solutions take off thanks to faster wireless data networks.