As a huge fan of Sharepoint I feel the RAM requirements of Sharepoint 2010 are a bit steep and this might hamper adoption (and thus consulting $$), at least for the next 12 months.
Development:
8 GB RAM for single server + (several for ) Visual studio 2010 are almost not possible on a good notebook, one has to:
- Buy a top of range Notebook (8 GB RAM +)
- Buy a small server with 16 GB +
Other issues:
- For a group of developers a company needs to buy a decent server (with 32 GB or more RAM) for development
- Virtualization will be not so easy with these system requirements
Production:
- Some business might not like having to use 8 or more GB RAM for a single site/portal.
- Hosting Sharepoint will be quite expensive
Sharepoint Server 2010 requirements
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485(office.14).aspx
Sharepoint 2010 Foundation requirements
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288751(office.14).aspx