As is the case with the month of January, the itch to predict for 2011 just became a little more pronounced for us, what with the context of our existence shifting into a higher gear in the last quarter of 2010.

Though we predicted a bunch of things in 2010, a couple of things seemed to have concurred with our Nostradamus sense.

1.       Cloud Computing – Providers like Amazon have evolved and we have heard almost all our new prospects asking about the ability to host on cloud.   It looks like the dedicated data centre model has a lot of selling to do to stay in the game this year.

2.       Collaboration in a context -  We definitely believed that workflows in collaborative applications are likely to be more pronounced for each business or social context and, to our delight, this is coming true.  We ourselves, had a great run with our Ideas platform which is all about creating online Communities of Practice. The potential combination of social media consulting and technology combining to bump up “Crowdsourcing” initiatives. Look out for our offerings in this space.

Here’s what we think will rule this year:

A.      Social Media Analytics:    User Generated Content (UGC) is definitely going under that magnifying glass of data mining and analytic applications to identify patterns, trends and potential opportunities for those who use it.  We believe that content aggregators like Compete, Alexa, Radian 6 and even Google will begin making money by feeding humongous amount of UGC to satiate the appetite for aggregated content.

The legal fraternity, of course will be richly rewarded for handling questions of “who owns the data?”

B.      Mobility Adoption:   Seriously, the mobile user stats aside, this will be year where the current lot of users will demand for apps to be available on their portable devices.  So here’s to mobility adoption. This will be the year of mobility where every web asset worth its salt will be pushed to the mobile world, even if it is the presentation aspect of it, on tablets and smartphones.  Get them or loose them.

C.      Infographics:   Infographics will increasingly occupy the high table of attention for presenting data in a very visual sense.  We believe that technologies like Adobe Flex and Microsoft Silverlight will see some good traction.  HTML 5 will be tried and tested.

D.      Integrate, Integrate and Integrate:   Those who focus on creating smartly conceptualized web services will truly stand to gain.  Consumers of these services will Integrate to gain functionality within a short time with a focus on a seamless user experience.  Call it outsourcing of a different kind.  

E.       Edutainment:  Though this subject may not see too much of excitement this year,  we can reasonably expect to see a few interesting deployments where serious business is conducted with fun (social or otherwise).  Definitely a space to keep track of.

That’s it folks.  Wishing you all an exciting year in 2011, and an exciting new world where Governments, Institutions and .com businesses will be at their wits end to understand it.  Bah..!, and they used to refer to the old businesses as “Brick and Mortar”.

By the way, can we help?