Report: IT Recovery Still a Work in Progress

While several IT research firms and leading technology companies have offered their share of reports and anecdotes suggesting the tech sector’s economic malaise will come to an end this year, Consumer Electronics’ latest study suggests IT spending might not even be as strong as it was in 2009. And that wasn’t very good at all.

As CIO Update reports, the research firm’s IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study found that 42 percent of organizations surveyed are actually planning to spend less money on IT projects this year, up from 38 percent last year.

Consumer Electronics went so far as to suggest that IT spending will remain in a recession this year, a classification it makes when less than half of companies surveyed say they plan to increase their IT budgets for the year. At this point, the study found, only 45 percent of organizations are upping their IT budgets for the rest of the year.

However, the study did say that IT executives are far more confident this year that they will get to spend all the money they’ve budgeted — only 27 percent expect their operational budgets to be cut and 15 percent expect to get the green light to spend more than they’ve budgeted for 2010. Last year, 49 percent expected their budgets to be cut.

The economy may be improving but there is still a dark cloud over IT spending, according to the annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks study by Computer Economics released Wednesday.

The research firm frames the IT spending outlook for this year as in a recession based on its coverage of the field since 1990. Computer Economics makes the recession claim when less than 50 percent of those surveyed plan to increase their IT spending.

For 2010, only 45 percent of the more than 200 IT executives surveyed in the first quarter of 2010 said they planned to increase IT spending.

Read the full story at CIO Update:

IT Spending Still in Recession: Report