Well, I’m doing it again, making predictions for the next year.  The sad thing is that I am even more cynical about making predictions this year than last.  That is why I wrote an article for CMS Wire on Trends for 2011.  I’m confident on trends but it is hard to determine if a trend will result in anything measureable.

Well, here we go.  A list of predictions, and things to watch, in 2011.

1. There will be a major acquisition that doesn’t involve Open Text. This isn’t to say Open Text won’t acquire someone big, but that there will be another acquisition that will be major.  It will likely involve one of the newer kids, founded 2005+, or EMC.
2. EMC will determine their Content Management future this year. This is a turning-point year for EMC.  After taking a little bit of abuse here, they started to right the ship and point in the needed direction.  Was it in time?  Will EMC give up on Content Management and just sell it?  Will the path to the future not be given the necessary focus or just dropped?  This year will have the answers.  By December, I’ll know if we will be talking about EMC as a Content Management leader in 2014.
3. “Enterprise 2.0” vendors will be reclassified. Organizations are going to realize that the Enterprise 2.0 isn’t a class of application, just marketing slang to identify new technologies to help business get things done.  The vendors are going to start falling into Collaboration, WCM, WEM, or other buckets.  Some will be acquired and become part of a larger bucket.  The focus is going to shift from “Enterprise 2.0” and onto the actually problem being solved.
4. Content Management in the Cloud will make a big splash.  This is a easy prediction.  We will hear of a massive success story, a  massive failure, or both.  That may seem wishy-washy, but what we hear will be directly related to how much people try to achieve in the Cloud.  The more complex the requirements, the more likely they will fail.  Those that are ready for everyday file-sharing will succeed.  Either way, I’m sure I’ll be writing a post at some point.  Maybe even one inspired by the decision by the GSA to use Google Apps.  We should hear some outcome next year.
5. Peter Monks will try to blackmail me. I’m actually going to meet him in person next year.  I suspect he will try to get some sort of incriminating picture and use it as leverage.  He’ll probably try and make me say that WordPress is a CMS or something silly like that.
6. An iPad challenger will emerge, driving the tablet market. We will see the emergence of a leading challenger to the iPad, which will be a great thing.  It will push innovation and make Apple have to push to maintain their early lead.  In the long-run, it will even lead to a significant price-drop in some tablet editions.  While I don’t expect to see significant price relief until 2012, the feature war will begin in earnest.  I expect it to be from an Android-based competitor, but RIM could surprise us (though I think they only get one chance).
7. eBook weaknesses will come to the forefront.  This is going to get its own post later, but there are some issues to eBooks really taking off.  Lending capabilities don’t reflect what happens in real life and I there is a paradigm conflict that can be centered around the odds of people re-reading books.  I think that this will evolve and begin to be addressed.  I don’t think any of the issues I see are permanent, but if you want to replace physical books, they have to be addressed.

That’s it, just 7.  I can’t think of any others I want to put out there that aren’t obvious.  I highly suggest reading the 2011 predictions of Jon Marks, which I feel are the best set of predictions out there.  The Real Story Group and Lee Dallas also have some good ones for your enjoyment.

The best thing is that no matter what we think may happen, something really interesting will happen that will catch us all off guard.  That is why we are still in this industry.  There are always enough new twists and turns to keep everyone engaged.

So onward into 2011!