Regardless of whose predictions you believe (or don't), there is a clear pattern: information tech-. nology budgetary growth will be sharply curtailed this year. Duh! My alma mater, Gartner Inc., is predicting that spending growth will be only 1.5%; the Meta Group down the street is predicting a drop of 2%; and surveys from Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street firms basically say the same thing: 2002 spending will be flat for information technology (TI). Now many of those in the know are saying how bad this is, how it will hurt productivity, how companies will fall behind, and blah, blah, blah. But I don't believe it for a second because savvy companies can always do more with less. In fact, (as I have said in the past), a slowing down on spending may actually be good for both users and vendors of information technology, as it will force both parties to be much more realistic about what products can actually do.
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