IT spending absorbs some blows

According to an article on C-NET, Goldman Sachs has released a study predicting that some aspects of IT spending will soften in the current period. The expected growth rate will not be quite as robust, coming in at 4% instead of 6%. Of course, like all economic news, not all sectors fare equally. Plus, the article does not address professional services, such as consulting or staff augmentation.

Nevertheless, there are definitely points of interest. For instance, Microsoft and Apple are neither losing nor gaining wallet share. Two vendors in the thin-computing space - VMWare and Citrix - are on the plus side, along with (shhhhh) Red Hat.

To me, this combination means that the desktop operating system is becoming less and less relevant to the corporate IT decision maker. Application availability, regardless of location or client platform, is gaining favor. And finally, it appears that Microsoft is starting to lose its stranglehold on the corporate computing environment.

Another point of interest is the presence of SAP on the upside. Those who predicted the demise of the proprietary ERP seem to have missed the target there.

I look forward to your comments.

Link to the article: Report: IT spending to drop, but Red Hat and Oracle to clean up