If you are a technology startup, ISV or established technology or business services provider, Gartner strategic technology predictions for 2008 needs to be closely watched.  Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years.

Out of 10 strategic technologies, I think following will have major opportunities for software technology startups

• Business Process Modeling:  Agile business processes are key for agile business enterprises.Business process modeling solutions with complementary technologies such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) will drive demand for business process modeling solutions.
• Metadata Management: Enterprise information management(EIM) solutions with data-driven and service oriented architectures will be key drivers in metadata management space. In addition data mining, cleansing and data integration of master data presents lot of product opportunities. 
• Virtualization: Virtualization and automation technologies in integration will offer tremendous possibilities in solution portability, hardware and software scalability along with application delivery models.     
• Mashup & Composite Apps: Web mashups are becoming dominant model for the creation of composite enterprise applications and these technologies will have significant impact on enterprise application architecture strategy and business process integration. 
• Web Platform & SaaS: Software as a service (SaaS) is already becoming a viable option in more markets and we must look beyond SaaS to examine how Web platforms will impact their business in 3-5 years.
• Social Software: We can expect significant consolidation in Web 2.0 space with consumer applications delivering robust Web 2.0 offerings to the enterprise customers. Social software technologies will be increasingly integrated within enterprise to augment traditional collaboration.

These opportunities in conjunction with each other and other proven fully-matured technologies could drive lot of future product innovations in business processes and consumer Internet space.