10 Enterprise Products That Will Shape IT in 2011

by Eric Lundquist

Never has so much hype been thrown at such an amorphous product. Cloud computing makes sense for the enterprise but it needs to be secure, private, compliant and easy to deploy. The cloud also needs to be able to refresh with new applications. That cloud needs to appear in 2011.

Everyone is on the move, but all that employee mobility has resulted in employees and customers drowning in e-mail, endless conference calls and corporate applications still rooted in the past. What 2011 needs is new, easy to share methods of communications, as well as corporate structures designed for mobility.

Tablet hardware has outpaced the tablet software. Enterprise tablet applications will be a big deal in 2011.

Smartphones are the hottest technology product available right now. But you want a smartphone that has all your corporate applications in a virtual, protected space.

Death by PowerPoint is a well known corporate torture device. In 2011, we need new ways and new applications to present information in a streamlined, easy to understand way.

Call this Facebook for the corporate set. In 2011, we need a simple, easy to use, but robust tool for employees and executives to manage and measure all their social networking communications.

You want to share your communications. You don’t want to get—new word here—WikiLeaked. What is needed is an easy to use, easy to manage secure content management system.

Voice over IP, video conferencing, social networking and, yes, even e-mail all under one corporate umbrella.

Remember the green movement? 2011 is the year to measure, manage and use all your resources in an efficient, environmentally friendly way.

Tie all those virtual server, client, storage and networking islands into one virtual space. And don’t forget those virtual business applications.