Top 10 Tech Trends to Watch in 2011 According to CIOs, CTOs

So, what exactly do top technology executives talk about when everyone is listening? A mix of technology and business topics made this year’s list of the Logicalis Top 10 Tech Trends to Watch for 2011, the company’s second annual study of the social media conversations of top IT executives. Conducted by Logicalis, an international provider of integrated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services, chief information officers (CIOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs) are using social networking to discuss more than the hottest technology trends. As popular social media tools mature, IT professionals are also using them to discuss business and management issues that can impact the way they run their organizations, as well as job and career issues.

Click through for 10 top tech trends to watch for in 2011, as identified by Logicalis.

Cloud has become a huge buzz word in the industry, but if you peel back the marketing fluff and hype, cloud computing simply represents a delivery model for consuming IT as a service. Whether that “IT as a service” is infrastructure, platform or software, it is just another way for an IT organization to deliver the technology necessary to run an organization’s business.

This year’s surprise? Social media discussions included a wide range of topics that affect IT managers daily, including Internet usage policies, recruitment, retention, motivation, conflict resolution, and general staff management.

Recognizing that time is the only commodity they can’t replace or replenish, CIOs and CTOs indicated in a multitude of conversations that they were feeling “overworked,” “understaffed” and “spread too thin.”

IT executives are focusing their attention beyond technology, and their conversations indicate they are looking at the overall corporate strategy.

An evergreen topic of conversation is the security and privacy of corporate infrastructure and data.

As IT executives embrace new methods of consuming software as a service, they are questioning existing software paradigms.

As they become more comfortable with social media, technology executives have adopted it for attending conferences, sharing insight and asking for peer guidance on a wide range of topics including how to create and enforce policies related to social media usage. On the negative side, IT executives expressed concerns about security, privacy and the risk of viruses introduced via social media.

Despite concerns over securing and managing devices in the workplace they don’t control, IT executives recognize that the rapid adoption of smart mobile device platforms (Android, Apple, Blackberry), combined with the undesirable expense of employee computing, has created a perfect storm for a mobile computing renaissance. Slimmed-down, low-cost, desktop-replacement mobile applications are making their way out of the app store and into the enterprise.

A change in job focus is causing IT executives to rethink how and where they deploy their staffs. Strategic outsourcing of non-core IT tasks is in vogue and savvy IT executives are assessing the impact and freedom it can provide.

As IT executives adapt to new business directions and adopt the latest technologies, they are aware that the nature of their careers has changed. It’s not “business as usual” with IT executives focused strictly on technology. They are seeing a greater emphasis on business acumen, strategy and tactics enabled by technology. The requirement to justify and build real financial-based business cases for IT spending has become the norm.