Cautious Optimism

Goldman Sachs has released its 2009 IT Spending Survey and results indicate that technology spending will recover modestly in 2010. This is in line with growth projections for the economy-at-large. David Rosenberg, of CNet News highlights a few key points from the report:

• With recessionary buying cycle clearly through the trough, the remaining question centers on the pace of recovery for 2010.
• Infrastructure, application development, and systems integration remain top spending areas, especially as CIOs start to consider newer technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing.
• There is pent-up demand in hardware most notable, positive for storage and server/PC refresh.
• The appetite for offshore services appears to be below trend at current levels.
• HP, NetApp, CommVault, Red Hat, Riverbed, and Salesforce.com are notable names showing positive upward momentum in our latest survey.

To me, there's nothing earth-shattering in this news. Political conditions in the USA being what they are, firms will not make major investments in technology, staffing, or infrastructure until this administration has been reined in. Mostly what we see in the above list are fairly basic, "cost-of-doing-business" type stuff. PCs and servers will need to be replaced. And as high-performance servers and storage units continue to drop in price, decision makers will see those investments as part of their cost-saving strategies.

Notice that there is nothing for Professional Services firms to get overly excited about. 2010 may be another challenging year for consultants, who must prove value everyday.

Read David Rosenberg's article at:
Survey: IT spending to recover in 2010