Here we are again. As John Lennon once wrote "another year over, a new one just begun," and that means it's prediction time here at FierceCM. When I was at ARMA and Enterprise 2.0 in California in November--my West Coast road trip as I like to call it--I noticed some big themes around SharePoint, mobile, social and the cloud (what else?). It's with those thoughts still fresh in my mind that I look ahead to 2011. You may recall last week I looked back at my predictions from last year. This week, we also have a story on what some industry experts see coming next year.

Here are my predictions for 2011:

Mobile governance will mature

Let's face it, you can't run from those mobile devices, so you might as well develop some sensible policies around their use in the work place. When your employees have access to mobile devices, it pretty much negates the idea of blocking sites you don't want them visiting, such as Facebook. That means governance has to play a bigger role and I expect we'll see more companies trying this route.

Enterprise 2.0 will see lots of M&A activity

One thing I noticed when I was at Enterprise 2.0 in November was there were a lot of products that looked very similar. When software reaches that maturity level, it's time to consolidate to build market share. I expect we'll see some players scooped up by larger ones and some merging together to build a bigger market share. It seems inevitable at this point.

There will be a high-profile legal case in the cloud

When Amazon Web Services shut down WikiLeaks earlier this month for what it called "a violation of the terms of service," it sent a shock wave through the cloud-buying market. I expect we will see some big event in the cloud in 2011 similar to this, which will result in a lawsuit against a cloud vendor, and some soul searching among cloud vendors and buyers alike.

ECM will continue to commoditize

With the release of SharePoint 2010, the increasing sophistication of open source options and the passing of CMIS, we will see the further commoditization of basic ECM services we began to see in earnest this year. In 2011, that will only increase as we begin to see more services like case management used to put the content in the CMS to use and provide some differentiation among vendors.

There will be a high-profile ECM merger

As the commoditization continues, market size will grow in importance for the larger vendors, and this could result in some high profile mergers. I look for something big in 2011, possibly involving Documentum, Open Text, Autonomy or some combination of those companies. In 2010, there were some rumors about EMC selling Documentum, although nothing concrete emerged. Similarly there were rumors around a possible Autonomy and Open Text match, although in the end nothing came of it. Next year, I expect something will.

So there you have it: My predictions for the coming year. We'll come back next year and review my choices and see how we did. Meanwhile, I wish you all of you a Happy Holidays and all the best for the coming year. Thanks for reading and coming back each week. - Ron 

Just a reminder we won't be publishing next week. Our next issue will be on January 5, 2011. See you next year.