Have been visiting with the folks at Gartner and if they are right then the following topics will be popular next year with the corporate IT world:

• cloud computing
• web 2.0
• democratization of applications
• consumerization of IT
• green computing
• the hype cycle
• did I mention cloud computing & web 2.0?
• unified communications
• social media in the enterprise
• and did I mention cloud computing?

My predictions for 2009?

• Those of us who are already pretty sick of the term web 2.0 are really going to be tired of it after talking about it for another year.

• Cloud computing will remain an ill-defined term that we will talk about endlessly for the next 3-4 years. Debates will rage as on topics such as if putting your servers into a utility based data centre is really ´cloud´ computing or if it only counts if you move your applications onto Amazon or Google.

• While many will talk about green computing nobody will actually do anything with it unless they can mount substantial cost saving arguments & demonstrate some genuine business value above & beyond feeling morally upright.

One very interesting thing is that Gartner people are out there experimenting with some social media (like Twitter, @Gartner_inc) and getting involved in conversations.