While overall hardware buying plans have returned to August 2008 levels, midsize and small businesses are split on their buying plans and levels of confidence.That's the conclusion of the latest CDW IT Monitor survey, which showed that 67% of all IT decision makers plan to buy new tech hardware within six months -- which matches the statistics from August of 2008.

That figure breaks down to 81% of large businesses and 84% of government IT leaders who say they plan to buy hardware, but only 75% of midsize companies will do so. And less than half (42%) of small businesses (under 100 employees) have such plans. 53% of small businesses plan to buy software and 41% are looking at hardware purchases.

In addition, less than a quarter of small businesses expect to boost their IT budgets within 6 months, while close to half of medium and large companies plan to spend more on tech. Putting together all these factors, the CDW IT Monitor calculates a score for each group, and small businesses earned a 63, the lowest among any corporate or government sector.

On the plus side, small businesses' anemic purchase plans are actually up from August 2009. And a whopping 94% of SMBs do plan to maintain current IT staffing levels for the next six months, topping all other sectors.

Rightly, I think, small businesses seem to understand that right now it's more important to hold on to your talented techies than buy the latest toys.

CDW's Mark Gambill says "we're not out of the woods yet."

Don't Miss: Coverage of previous CDW IT Monitor updates

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