2010 Trends & Themes, 2011 Predictions, It's That Time Again

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Dec 1, 2010

Trends, themes and predictions, oh my! It's that time again, and CMSWire would be remiss if we didn't get in on the fun.

Today is December 1 and as we find ourselves heading into the last month of 2010, most of us are looking back at the important trends and themes of the year and looking forward to what will happen in 2011.

Now we know you all have your own predictions, and we encourage you to add your top prediction to the comments below. But for those of you who would prefer to hear them from someone else, we have a running list of industry folks who will be offering their thoughts on the year almost behind us and predictions for what's to come.

Do you think there will be any surprises?

Trends and Themes in 2010

This has been an interesting year, one in which we started our editorial themes focused on some of the hottest topics in the industry:

Web Engagement Management

Web Content Management 1.0 has left the building, but what are we then left with? Vendors are pushing to redefine what web content management means. And in today's world, it means a focus on more than simply managing web content.

For a number of vendors, it has become about supporting the entire digital channel and the offline channel. The website is not the only channel to consider these days, mobile and social networks are also in the mix. There is a resounding need to marry the needs of the marketing department and the sales department to those of the customer and prospect.

But not every web content management vendor is pushing towards the model of web engagement management (or web experience management). Many are simply trying to get their solutions up to speed with the most demanded capabilities, including mobile access and social media.

And here's a question for you. How many organizations are simply still struggling to understand how to leverage the web at all? How many haven't even adopted a Web CMS? That number may surprise many of us.

SharePoint 2010

SharePoint 2010 came to the masses this year and its coverage has been both positive and critical. We spent a lot time looking at what's new and improved. Social computing capabilities topped that list, as well as some nice new document management features.

The challenges many faced with SharePoint 2007 implementations are not necessarily going away with 2010. But the reality is, that in many cases, this is not a SharePoint issue, it's about proper planning and governance. SharePoint is no quick fix to all your information management woes, but it can help you.

Enterprise Collaboration

2010 has been the year of the knowledge worker. Yes, we know, you've been around for a little while now. But it does seem like you've picked up some respect this year. It has come in a number of forms, and enterprise collaboration is one of them.

Figuring out how to help employees work smarter and be more effective is something every organization should be doing. Enterprise 2.0 technologies are a key part of this. And as most people are saying, before you can implement social capabilities externally, you better be able to implement them successfully internally.

Enterprise Information Management Agility

There's no shortage of information to manage within organizations today. The challenge is to manage it in such a way that it's accessible and usable by the knowledge workers who need it to make business decisions.