Yesterday I talked about the inevitable thawing of frozen IT budgets in 2010 following the 2008 recession.

We’re already seeing that 2011 will enjoy an enormous increase in capital expenditures. Included in that is a huge influx of venture capital cash. And these VC firms are hungry to put their money to work.

The increase of capital in today’s market is fueling the next wave of entrepreneurism. These entrepreneurial endeavors are proliferating the demand for “hot” technologies like Flash, Flex, PHP (all open source, for that matter), Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com.

But Fortune 2000 companies are competing against the onslaught up start-ups for a smaller pool of technical resources.  Which is great for technologists—it drives up salaries.

Other “hot” technologies Bluewolf is tracking in 2011:

• The hunger for mobile business “apps” is dramatically driving up the demand for contractors with skills in Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iPhone and iPad platforms. Demand for Android developers increased 710% in October 2010 over October 2009,* thanks to the rapid expansion of Android technology to new phones and carriers in 2010.

• As such platforms mature into the business-to-business space, Bluewolf expects this Android skill-set frenzy to continue through 2011. A scarcity of qualified Android developers in the market will drive competition for resources and drive up salaries for developers. (Frequently, good Android contractors have backgrounds in server side development, specifically Java.)

What’s cooling off.
There is an interesting dynamic in the on-premise software space, as evidenced by the recent acquisition of Art Technology Group (ATG) by Oracle.  This is further validation that on-premise infrastructure still dominates the IT landscape. But Oracle, SAP and Microsoft all recognize that the future is in the Cloud.

* Brown, Steven E.F. (2010, November 8). Android demand drives up contract hiring 121%. San Francisco Business Times.