Gartner just announced their list of the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009. Social software, which would be the logical category for Drupal, came out 7th on the list.

Sometimes I scratch my head when I look at these lists, but this year it seems to make more sense to me. When I look at it from an Acquia and Drupal point of view, several of the items are interesting and relevant. I've provided the list below, along with my observations on how each item relates to Drupal.

1. Virtualization: We're seeing signs of customer demand for Acquia Drupal packaged as a virtual software appliance. It's all about accelerating the initial installation and simplifying ongoing maintenance. We're taking a hard look at this and having great dialogs with several vendors in this area. Stay tuned.
   
2. Cloud Computing: We run the Acquia Network, all of Acquia.com, and much of the rest of our infrastructure and our development environment in the the Amazon EC2 cloud.  It's cheaper, more reliable, and it just works.  We see a lot of opportunity to leverage this kind of infrastructure to make it easier than ever to get started with Acquia Drupal scale it up.  Dries has said some really interesting things about Drupal in the cloud. 
   
3. Servers - Beyond Blades: This is really an extension of the two items that precede it on the list.  The hardware is adapting to become more flexible in an on-demand world.  Sounds like even more reliable and cheaper clouds are on the way.  And that means more and more people, including the long tail web sites that rely on Drupal, are going to have more and better and cheaper options in the future.  It's all good news.
   
4. Web-oriented Architectures: This is all about loosely coupled architecture that typifies the Web 2.0 model. Drupal already does a great job with content feeds and aggregation to allow lightweight integration and syndication.  And the Services module and Drupal 7 improvements like Fields in Core are going to open up all kinds of new possibilities.
   
5. Enterprise Mashups: If Dries has his way, Drupal will be on the forefront of this trend by implementing semantic web concepts in a deep way without creating lots of extra work for everyone. This will unleash a new wave of mashups that are insanely useful.
   
6. Specialized Systems: What Gartner is really talking about here is new an exotic kinds of appliances.  I've been surprised to be having really interesting discussions about the potential for Drupal hardware appliances lately.  Who would have guessed?
7. Social Software and Social Networking: This is where Drupal lives, and the big trend we see here is the convergence of single purpose social software apps into integrated social publishing systems like Drupal that implement all the most important Web 2.0 patterns.  Drupal is on the forefront of this trend, and combined with the unstoppable innovation of an organic open source community, Drupal is a major disruptive force that is delivering incredible value and results to customers of all sizes.
   
8. Unified Communications: I don't see much of a Drupal angle here.
   
9. Business Intelligence: Sometimes it's an oxymoron, but don't blame Drupal.
   
10. Green IT: I think most people in the Drupal community are all for it.

So, based on this list, Drupal is either driving or surfing 7 of the 10 top trends affecting enterprise IT for 2009.  And another bit of good news is that the Social Software category moved up in the list from the bottom to the 7th position on a year over year basis.

2008	2009
Green IT Unified Communications Business Process Modeling Metadata Management Virtualization 2.0 Mashup & Composite Apps Web Platform & WOA Computing Fabric Real World Web Social Software	Virtualization Cloud Computing Servers — Beyond Blades Web-Oriented Architectures Enterprise Mashups Specialized Systems Social Software and Social Networking Unified Communications Business Intelligence Green IT

Whether the Gartner analyst consensus reflects reality is a very open question. But at the very least it means that Gartner may be listening a little more attentively to client requirements for social publishing in 2009. It also means that there may be more analysts researching, writing, and speaking about social software in the year ahead, and hopefully some percentage of that cognitive surplus will be directed in the direction of Drupal. Given that the economic environment is going to be tough in 2009, it's nice to have the industry wind blowing in the right direction.