The strongest growth area will be software management tools, and much of that growth will come from cloud-based products.

Overall financial management, human resources management, ePurchasing, CRM and business intelligence software will collectively grow by 11.4% through 2011, and 12% next year, Forrester said.

Some hot new software categories are emerging from these broad software management areas.

These include case management tools, automated spend analysis, services procurement, supplier risk and performance management, services procurement, as well as talent and recruitment management software tools, according to Forrester.

Software in these categories will grow by 15% to 20% both this year and next, with most purchases for software as a service products, the researcher projected.