2010: When IT budgets start to grow again

If you haven't guessed already: 2009 was a bad year for IT spending, analysts have found. But fear not - things are looking brighter for the coming years.

According to research from Gartner, enterprise tech spending is down 5.2 per cent on 2008 figures.

By next year, however, the analyst predicts spending will see year-on-year growth of 3.3 per cent.

The news is not all good for CIOs, however: for more than half of tech chiefs, budgets won't grow in real terms next year while spending will only return to 2008 levels in 2012.

CIOs shouldn't expect a budget increase in real terms before 2011
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CIOs faced with budget cuts and tougher conditions this year appear to have made the most stringent cutbacks around hardware, which saw enterprise spending fall by 16.5 per cent year-on-year in 2009.

But as IT bosses shy away from replacing servers, printers and the like and extend refresh cycles for an extra year, they may be running the risk of equipment failures that could affect the business.

According to Gartner, it's an issue that CFOs need to be on top of - and as such, CIOs need to make sure they're explaining the matter in a way the CFO can grasp.

Hardware purchases will remain flat into 2010, according to Gartner. Not all IT sectors will remain static, however: as spending starts to recover in 2010, services and software will be the biggest winners, as spending increases by 4.5 per cent and 4.8 per cent respectively.