This is CBR's ninth annual IT trends issue. For nearly a decade we've gathered and analyzed data across a broad range of IT topics: analytics, IT spending, hiring and outsourcing, IT's role in innovation and value creation, social media, mobile computing, the cloud, security, and so on. Like all issues of CBR, each IT trends issue gives you an up-to-the-moment look at the "vital signs" of the industry. But more importantly, because we are able to look at how signs change over time, every year each IT trends issue just keeps getting smarter and smarter.