This IDC study starts IDC's annual "predictions season" with a look at what IDC sees as the emergence of the IT industry's "new mainstream." This new IT marketplace will finally "arrive" in 2011 as disruptive forces we've seen percolating in the past several years — cloud-based solutions, mobile devices and apps, wireless broadband, virtualization and converged infrastructure, social networking, smart devices, and "big data" analytics — move from early-adopter status to the beginnings of mainstream adoption.

According to IDC Chief Analyst Frank Gens, "The next decade of opportunity for the IT industry will be about two things: successfully competing in this new mainstream IT marketplace and helping customers create an "intelligent economy" on top of this mobile, virtual, and social technology platform."