A continuation of last week’s blog entry with some more trends to be aware of in the IT industry.

- “Runner Up” Functional Role:

Architect. While any role that can’t be outsourced and off-shored is a good place to be, Architecture is simply not something a company can do without. That said, within the Architecture realm certain domains are hotter than others. Enterprise Architect (those responsible for end to end solutions) should repeat as being the most desired and hardest to fill. Second should be Enterprise Application Architect followed by Solutions Architects (truly big picture and very extremely business facing capacities), Data Architect, then Security Architect and finally Infrastructure Architect. 2005 was good, 2006 better and 2007 the best yet. 2008 portends to be even better for this role.

- Where the money will be spent?

Someone once said “follow the money.” That’s the focus here and the biggest push should be in Virtualization. InformationWeek has written seemingly every other day about this topic with its most recent installment being Sun MicroSystems anouncement about their latest entry into the fray. If you’re in Infrastructure you already know this is what management cares about.

- Runner up; “Where the Money will be spent?”

On consulting companies (tongue and cheek). Okay, I couldn’t resist. Seriously though, the money seems to be pouring into anything associated with the Financial Services and Insurance/ Annuity sector positioning themselves to compete for the windfall coming from the “boomer $.” This means Enterprise Architecture efforts to move towards a more SOA compliant world, eBusiness/ eCommerce initiative and large enterprise Data Services efforts to finally deliver on the promises of B.I.