CSI Info-Mgmt: Profiling Predictors 2011

The only thing in publishing more dependable than end-of-the-year recaps are the predictions for the upcoming year that follow. It's a sequence as sure as hot gift stories follow Black Friday. You get the idea.

Business journalists need recaps and predictions since most of our news goes offline during the holidays. But unlike hindsight, foresight is a barometer of the prognosticator and I know this because my inbox is bulging with pumped up tech prospects for the New Year.

For a different take on vested interest, our editor in chief polled our very own editors for takes on 10 things that will be especially interesting or "hot" next year. After she handed the predictions to me, I removed the names, took the top five from their lists and profiled them as inscrutably as I could. (Remember, we're explicitly just having fun here.)

Editor #1

1. Cloud
2. Analytics
3. Big Data
4. Data governance
5. Data quality

This person has an institutional mindset burdened by ongoing cost-cutting demands but onto resonant themes for discretionary investment backed by trending institutional shifts. This person senses opportunity but is frustrated by her/his daily environment. Were this person in a corporate role I'd expect someone looking for discipline and help to turn around an entrenched inefficient infrastructure and awkward corporate culture.

Editor #2
 
1. Mobile BI
2. Security related to cloud computing
3. Security investment generally
4. Data center virtualization
5. Company consolidation

This person leads with an opportunity, but everything that follows is about risk, followed by cost. In business this person might be a sales manager looking to step up field productivity, but has a cautious background based on harsh working experiences in the past. More likely, this person knows technology but probably works in finance and is entering another budget/planning cycle.

Editor #3

1. Social media – finding ROI
2. Analytics
3. Mobile BI
4. Cloud
5. SaaS

This is the view of a frustrated opportunist who's looking for an alternative to internal IT provisioning messaging that is too slow or inflexible to respond to business needs. The corporate equivalent of this person would be a successful manager looking for new ideas because he/she is unable to tie clear company objectives to existing resources. Two years ago this person was considered a loudmouth and risk taker but that profile is less defensible now.

So there you have our guesswork. The profiles are not serious but the topics are certainly all relevant. If you like, you can add your predictions to the list and let us know what they say about you and your own goals in the New Year.