I'm excited to be a part of InformationWeek's blogging community and hope you'll join me as I explore the world of content management.A big part of what makes us tick is your feedback, so don't hesitate to join the conversation. To kick things off I thought I'd look at some of the trends in 2008 that are sure to make for an exciting year in content management.

2008 | The Year They (Business Users) Make Contact

2008 should be a watershed year for business users to take control of the content that drives their business. Vendors and smart enterprises finally start to demand the better interfaces and back-end workflow that truly drives adoption.

Seeing Green In Content Management

Content management will dovetail off the "green IT" push in corporations everywhere, which will give new life to the notion of going "paperless." And with an expanded eye on corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, vendors and businesses alike begin to re-engineer case studies and PR campaigns to emphasize how digital content enables their "green" strategies.

Content Management Gets Social

Like it or not, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace already are impacting the way we share information and manage content within the enterprise. In 2008, the corporate lines of content management will become further blurred as Facebook-like pages, blog profiles, and RSS capabilities move closer to existing CMS platforms. Businesses will extend their current CMS infrastructure with social media modules and platforms that allow niche communities and online workspaces to be built at breakneck speed. Social media becomes a CMS product manager's best friend in 2008.

SaaS And PaaS (Platform As A Service)

Software as a service (SaaS) becomes utilitarian in 2008 and loses some of its brand reputation to its big brother, platform as a service (PaaS). And just as Salesforce.com has taken the platform route, CMS vendors will begin to market themselves as all-encompassing content platforms. Products will begin to bake in all the necessary accoutrements, from basic content services to automated tagging and optimization so that once content is published, it's Web-ready. The other platform direction might evolve into "hybrid enterprise suites," where CMS platforms reside inside larger, more traditional enterprise applications.

Mashing Up Content Management 2.0

Mashups continue to steal the headlines in many technology circles, and with good reason. As service-oriented architecture (SOA) has finally taken hold, companies are now using mashups to deliver real-time business functionality, or so-called "situational apps." 2008 will be a year of fast change for content management vendors as innovative companies apply new meaning to the term "business development" and strike deals with content providers, Web 2.0, and social media providers to expand road maps and develop new functionality in days, not months.