I've taken some heat in comments at the ZDNET version of my post about the top 15 tech trends research piece. Apparently, to non-Forrester clients who don't have access to the research on the website (except for a rather steep by-the-drink price), the blog post comes off as a teaser with no payoff. Mea culpa. Here's the deal: My process, like that of many analysts these days, is to do research, publish it on our website, and then yak about it via social media. While I'm very careful in Twitter to point out when links will take you to something that's free versus something that's for Forrester clients, I wrote the blog post that found its way to ZDNET's site mostly with Forrester clients in mind. It mostly says "Hey, check out this research doc. Here's what I was thinking when I set out to publish it."

What happens next is that the various analysts who contributed to the trends doc will post blog entries about their areas of expertise, specifically about the topics we talked about in the trends doc. So, in a few weeks, there will be lots of info for non-Forrester clients to read to dig into what we're talking about in this trends piece.

But for now, the social media campaign is looking too much like we're withholding the bottom line just to squeeze some bucks out of the public. Not so. In the interest of addressing that issue, here is a table of the tech trends in that piece, sorted by highest impact (over the next 3 years).

By the way, I stand by that statement that I also got heat regarding tablets in IT strategy documents. I've reviewed a lot of IT strategies in the past 10 years, and mobility has been hot that whole time and is only getting hotter. Everyone explores different form factors as part of their mobility strategies and has considered custom-engineered tablets like those used in the logistics industry. However, I did not see tablets taken seriously as a mainstream commodity item, appropriate for the mainstream corporate world, outside of those specialty areas, until the iPad launch.

Anyway, here's the list. Stay tuned for those additional blog posts covering these areas in more detail!

Top 15 Tech Trends For 2011-2013