I was curious how many of your companies are planning to increase or at least not cut back on technology spending. I am more interested in software/development/integration than hardware.
If CEO's can get more money into their pocket by spending, they would. Right now it's exact opposite.
I think most companies would be wise to tighten their belts in all areas so its no surprise that IT is part of that. If there's a strong business case for upgrades or new packages go with it but otherwise be cautious. Big projects usually involve consultants and hiring lots of contractors which are more expensive than the cost of software upgrade itself. I work for a big company and they recently decided not to upgrade from W2K to XP and I doubt we'll move to Notes 6 anytime soon.
See, I'm not sure that market trends are as unified across those sectors right now as they were just a few years ago- I tend to sperate Technology into Business Applications (i.e., security, telephony, digital imagine, etc) as a more consistent indicator of trends at this point. First off, this takes into consideration such aspects as market syngergy/symbiosis/interplay, market dependencies (would one expect in increase in server hardware and integration consulting spending in concert with an increase in ERP sales?), and technical/legal standards (HIPPA, ISO, FDIC, DOD), and ties commodities previously considered as disparate into natural market chains. That said, both integration and hardware are suffering in my area, though companies of particular quality and value have been able to do well. My company has experienced continued growth in the 20% range over the past few years by targeting accounts where they knew they had strategic cost advantages, establishing accounts in bigger cities where we offer a lower cost alternative to the big guys, and expanding our service offerings in growing markets like technology, among other things. Our development side has been strong, though our in-house CRM suite is just starting reach maturity. Actually, as a sign of growth my company is in the process of spinning of the CRM product into a new company, for a variety of reasons. In general, I would saying the overall environment in this region is one of stabilization and in some cases, slow regrowth in the software market.