IT spending growing despite slowdown woes

According to nationwide report

11 March 2008 11:09 GMT / By Katie Scott

Despite uncertainty about the economy, technology sales are set to continue to grow.

The National Computing Centre has today published the results of a survey that suggest that technology is unlikely to become a casualty of spending cut-backs.

Instead - IT expenditure is predicted to remain buoyant.

58% of respondents predict above inflation increases in IT spend in the next year, with the average growth rate expected to be 4.9%.

"We hear talk of a recession, but the benchmark results indicate that IT purchasers are remaining confident about future economic conditions; they are making sure that their businesses have the right technology to deliver growth over the coming years, but they are not over optimistic", said Stefan Foster, the NCC's managing director.

And who will be the winners from the continued growth?

Microsoft is likely to benefit, according to the NCC.

The survey revealed that Windows XP dominates the server marketplace with almost three-quarters of respondents using it, but in 2 years time, the same number of respondents said that they will be using Vista - which means a sales boom for Microsoft.

And the number of laptops used and PDAs are also set to increase, while the collective number of desktops computers will go down as more flexible working becomes the norm across the country.