Wall Street woes won't take down tech

Information technology spending is faring better than the overall economy, and the sector "will avoid a recession in 2008," says Gartner. But in a report sent to clients this week, the analyst firm says it believes IT budgets will show "very low year-over-year growth rates until business growth significantly improves." Gartner and Forrester Research do not see tech spending traveling into negative territory, but the words "slow" and "slowdown" are used often enough in their reports to get the message across about what's ahead. Forrester released its forecast last week. But Gartner is nonetheless advising clients to hedge a little and not assume that the economy won't improve next year. It's recommending that IT managers prepare two budgets: one budget "based on guidelines and directions of senior executives," as well as a "growth budget for 2009 in the event that healthier economic growth rates begin to return next year." Gartner said overall U.S. economic growth and IT growth were moving at two different speeds and the tech industry may be "even more resilient than we had originally imagined."