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Gartner. Forrester. IDC. And lots of smaller fish, too. You can't read a tech-industy news story, attend a conference or listen to a sales pitch without someone quoting an industry analyst. For tech companies, analysts are big news and big business, promising to help with transformation, monetization and a slew of other things ending in "-ation."

But what do technology industry analysts really do? And how do you find the one that's right for your company's needs. Let me try to explain, from the inside. You see, from 1999 through 2001, I was an analyst at Jupiter Research, now part of Forrester Research.

Forrester's Brian Hopkins has identified 10 tech trends that enterprise architects should be watching through 2014. The report, released on October 7th, identifies trends that are expected to have a strong impact on IT over the next few years.

The 10 technology trends on Forrester's watchlist through 2014 fall under four categories: Application platforms, integration, infrastructure and operations, and mobile computing.

It's often said that business leaders make their companies in their own image. In that case, no two images ever stood in starker contrast with one another than the Hewlett-Packard of former CEO Mark Hurd, and the Hewlett-Packard of present CEO Léo Apotheker. Whether for better or worse, HP is becoming a different company than the one many enterprise clients signed their contracts with just a few years ago.

That fact has led one Forrester analyst to recommend this to his firm's clients: not that they dump HP, but that they make a careful re-assessment of their business relationship with the firm, taking into consideration whether a contingency plan for switching vendors might be in order.

The "mix" between desktop and laptop PCs flipped toward the laptop side of the equation for most of the world's PC manufacturers five years ago. The reason, it was surmised at the time, is that the nature of the workforce is changing: that "the office," as we have come to know it, is no longer rooted to a desk.

A report issued Wednesday by Forrester Research analyst T. J. Keitt flies completely in the face of that supposition. Data accumulated by Forrester suggests a seemingly self-contradictory phenomenon: Although more U.S.-based IT departments supply their workers with laptops, the most mobile workers in today's workforce are least likely to use a laptop more than a desktop computer. In fact, more professionals who think they're more mobile than most, are actually chained to wherever their desktop PC is.

Mobile and how it changes the workforce remains high on Forrester's research agenda with one of its latest reports: The Forrester Wave: Mobile Collaboration, Q3 2011. This is the first Wave for mobile collaboration.

Forrester looked at a number of factors, including enterprise readiness and cross-platform support. The firm only considered cloud-based apps with native applications available for more than one mobile operating system, which caused several vendors' products to be left out (including Microsoft SharePoint and RIM BlackBerry Messenger) to be left out.

In a new report titled Mobilize Your Collaboration Strategy Forrester outlines its vision for the mobile enterprise, and it all revolves around native apps and cloud providers.

With the numbers of smartphones being brought to work (Forrester thinks as much 18% of the workforce is using their own smartphones for work, but Unisys and IDC indicate that number may be much higher) collaboration apps are more important than ever. Which collaboration apps matter most on a smartphone or tablet?

According to a new report from Forrester, Windows 7 is now in use on 20% of corporate desktops as of March 2011. Windows XP still holds on to 59.9% of the enterprise desktop world (down from 67.5% a year go). Apple now has an 11% share of the corporate desktop (up from 9.1%). Linux has only 1.4% (it was 1.3% a year before this study).

Meanwhile, Internet Explorer use is declining slightly while Chrome and Safari are on the rise.

As we've said, time's are still tough for IT workers despite the relatively large demand for employees with technical skills. At the core of the problem seems to be a mismatch between the skill that unemployed workers have and the skills companies desire. Earlier today we explored some ideas about how IT workers can re-invent the resume to stand-out from other applicants. But what jobs should they be applying for? Data center jobs are an option. But, as reported by Integration Developer News, Forrester believes some IT workers' future may be in business intelligence.

New research from Gartner indicates that despite all the buzz about tablets, smartphones are still the number one priority for consumers - and by extension, for workers. Forrester has a new report out on the use of personal smartphones at work. According to Forrester's research, 18% of workers are using smartphones for work - even if it's not officially sanctioned by IT.

As part of its Predicts 2011 series, Gartner has made four predictions for the near future of business intelligence and analytics. Also, Forrester analyst James Kobielus has written a lengthy article outlining his own predictions for business analytics in Information Week. Both see analytics being embedded in more business processes, particularly in collaborative and social software.