Is The IT Recession Over?

Recently, IT spending increases have been rare as black pearls in oysters. Well, that may soon be changing, according to a user survey conducted by Spiceworks.The IT management supplier found that companies plan to increase their spending by four percent in the second half of this year. The results come from 3,011 respondents in 117 countries. Virtualization seems to be driving the additional expenditures. Sixty eight percent of companies plan to utilize some form of virtualization by the end of 2010, and that is a dramatic increase from the 44 percent with such plans at the beginning of 2010.

But the bump is having a minimal impact on IT jobs. Sixty five percent of small and medium businesses plan to keep their IT staff the same size between now and year-end while only 20 percent plan to add full-time IT staff.

One surprise is that spending on hosted IT services is down for the second half of 2010. Forty eight percent of IT professionals plan to purchase new, upgrade or renew at least one IT service, which is down from the 56 percent reported for first half of 2010. Hosted email purchases bucked that trend: 38 percent of respondents plan to use these services compared to 23 percent reported in the first half of the year.

Because of the recent downturn, IT budgets have been in the doldrums. The four percent increase comes with caveats but may indicate that small and medium businesses are now ready to invest more heavily in their IT systems.