If there's anything better than a Top 10 list, it's a Top 15 list. Put the two together, and you have 25 tops to ponder. In this case, we're talking about top IT trends, as forecast by the major research firms. Looking at them together should give you a pretty good idea of where IT will trend over the next few years. So ask yourself: Are you positioned to embrace these emerging technologies? First, here are 15 hot tech trends from Forrester.

1. Next-gen business intelligence takes shape, combining real-time access with pervasiveness, agility, and self-service 2. Business rules processing and policy-based SOA move to the mainstream 3. SaaS and cloud-based platforms become standard 4. System management enables continued virtualization 5. Collaboration platforms become people-centric 6. Event-driven patterns demand attention 7. Customer community platforms integrate with business apps 8. Apps and business processes go mobile on powerful devices and faster networks 9. Analytics target text and social networks 10. IaaS finds a broader audience 11. IT embraces planning and analysis tools to manage the future 12. BPM will be Web-2.0-enabled 13. Client virtualization is ubiquitous 14. Master data management matures 15. Telepresence gains widespread use

Next, Gartner outlines its top ten technologies for 2011.

1. Cloud computing 2. Mobile apps and media tablets 3. Next-generation analytics 4. Social analytics 5. Social communication and collaboration 6. Video 7. Context-aware computing 8. Ubiquitous computing 9. Storage class memory 10. Fabric-based infrastructure and computers

It's also interesting to note what has fallen off Gartner's top 10 between last year and this year:

-- IT for green -- Reshaping the data center -- Security-activity monitoring -- Virtualization for availability

One thing's for certain: The pace of change continues to speed up. -- Don Willmott