While these are troubled times for much of the global economy, in the world of IT, things have rarely been better. The combination of mobile, social, cloud and the whole as-a-service movement is revitalizing the IT sector, generating a new wave of success and enthusiasm, even a mini hi-tech bubble. While US unemployment is over 9%, IT unemployment is less than 4 percent, resulting in talent wars and rising salaries. The nerds are winning, again.

This gap will continue to widen. As more and more of the physical economy – products, services, and facilities – are virtualized, the IT business can expand even if the overall economy continues to stumble. Our recent research on The Next Generation of Digital Game-Changers, has identified 20 of the most important ways this will happen, including location awareness, reputation management, collaborative consumption, wireless broadband, and augmented reality. Nearly 50 years after the first mainframes, there's never been a better time to be in IT...