Now a days, almost every big giants are looking for professionals having exposure on Entity framework, MVC with WCF. jQuery is now the base requirement (consider as every professional should know). If you are proficient in SignalR then it is plus. Enterprise applications are being developed using these technologies. I think new technologies like Store Apps will be in full-fledged use at-least after a year.
Now, simple or core asp.net programming is being considered as the base and companies are looking experts. Due to easy availability of learning resources(compare to early days) has made technology level higher. Internet is flooded with technical articles or resources. Everyone is making his/her own blog. In each and every minutes at-least 20-25 technical articles/blogs get posted.
Though there is no development without competition, but it requires you to upgrade your skills to be in line. Otherwise you will be out. There are some other technologies/tools/frameworks in buzz like HTML5, WPF, etc. But to build a data application, MVC, WCF is being used with Azure capabilities. Cloud computing is the future. Big giants wants their ERP/CRM to be on cloud.
Earlier Microsoft has released SQL Helper classes for data accessing. They also released Enterprise Library ( Application Blocks) for the same with addition to logging, validation etc. Recently in Feb'2013, Microsoft released its new version 6.0 (CTP version) with Semantic Logging Application Block. This new version provides the facility to use EventSource class which has been released with .net framework 4.5.
Thus, apart from ORMs like Entity Framework, Enterprise Library's proficiency will be in demand in future.
For richer UI based applications, WPF,XAML is still rocking. In browsers, Silverlight is going down slowly with HTML5 & CSS3.
Hence, following tech are in more demand(now a days)-
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Architecture - MVC
UI - HTML5, CSS3
Services - WCF (in future, API)
Other Tools/Techs- jQuery, KnockoutJs with MVC for MVVM pattern, Signal R, oData, Cloud Computing( Azure ), APIs
I request experts to comment on it.