Gartner on 2003 - the good news

You won't find too many industry experts bullish about the prospects for IT spending next year. At the same time, you'd expect any organisation partly dependent on vendor clients desperate for rays of optimism to highlight some good news. Gartner recently did a fine job of providing a pros and cons, mixed outlook.

The best that could be said for Gartner's general forecasts for next year is that 2003 is likely to be better than this past year. That may not be much but it's something.

A few more CIOs expect to increase their IT spend than decrease it. Not by much, admittedly, and some sectors will remain weaker. Manufacturing, Gartner pointed out, will still struggle whereas pharmaceuticals, the financial sector and the public sector (including health) will see some growth in IT expenditure, echoing studies elsewhere.

And looking globally, as Gartner VP and research director John Mahoney put it: "The UK is among the least weak of the IT economies."

Given that the worse may well be over - even if it might not feel that way just yet - there are a few other positives to take away from Gartner's latest briefing. Forecasts aside, it is incontrovertible that anyone in IT who rides out this downturn will have learnt a lot. Post dot-com (false) economy, users - CIOs especially - should be aware that cost cutting, greater efficiencies and technology justified for business reasons should be the norm and not only about hard times.

And as various top-level consultants will tell you, fighting the very political fights of IT versus the rest of the board can actually be easier during a dip. Come through this and the credibility of IT goes up - and that's no bad thing for an industry that has had its image and leadership problems over the years.

As for inflated contractor rates and unnecessary consultants - if they can't be ditched now, you're in real trouble.

Gartner's technological picks were for real time enterprise developments such as web services and instant messaging. Now may be the time to be trimming ambitions but it isn't the time to be doing away with them altogether. The fact that IM is in its corporate infancy in Europe - Gartner puts this down to the entrenched popularity of SMS text messaging, for one thing - shows there are always solutions on the horizon to make further improvements.

(And for those who think IM is about staff having friendly chats and time wasting Gartner's Mark Raskino warned: "You can't be that curmudgeonly and stupid - people said the same thing about email, the web and mobiles at work.")

And if all this isn't enough, take some satisfaction in being in an industry that is increasingly professional, more mature, still exciting and better prepared for the inevitable ups and downs of the rest of the decade.