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By Mark Henricks
Don't look now, but that orange glow on the horizon that you thought represented your career hopes going up in smoke just may instead be a glimmer of hope. According to the latest CDW IT Monitor, 48 percent of IT decision-makers expect fatter budgets in the next six months, and 37 percent of big companies are looking to hire. Both percentages represent double-digit increases from this time last year.
The details are not all quite so rosy inside the most recent report of industry trends by retailer CDW, which hired Richard Day Research to poll 1,070 IT decision-makers in the third week of May. Most of the good news is concentrated in the big-company sector. If companies of all sizes are included, just 22 percent expect to hire additional IT staff in the next six months. That's up 4 percentage points from June 2009, but not nearly as promising as the big companies alone.
Similarly, 29 percent of federal government IT leaders anticipate hiring more staff in the balance of 2010. That is up 9 percent percentage points since April, however. This suggests that the environment in government is improving faster, although it has farther to go.
CDW calculates an overall index of confidence, which held steady at 72 for the fourth straight time. Optimism was brightest at large companies, where the index was 79, and dimmest at small firms, where it stood at 62. Medium-sized companies scored a little better than their smallest brethren, with 75 percent.
Sizable big-small dichotomies appeared with regard to budget forecasts, with 25 percent of companies with fewer than 100 employees looking for a boost in the next six months, compared to 55 percent of companies with 100 to 999 employees and 67 percent of large companies.
When government budget expectations were broken down, results were similar. Twenty-seven percent of local governments saw things looking up, versus 34 percent of state governments and 55 percent of federal government respondents.
The CDW Monitor measuring overall confidence among government IT leaders stayed unchanged at 69. Federal government CIOs were the most optimistic, improving to 75. State CIOs' outlook slipped to 68.
IT vendors got some encouraging news. Seventy-four percent of those surveyed said they would replace or install software by year-end. That was down somewhat since April, but up 5 percentage points from the same time last year. When it came to hardware, 68 percent thought some installations and replacements were likely in the rest of the year.
The CDW Monitor is broken down into two more specific measures. The IT Value Monitor measures IT's value in achieving organizational objectives. The IT Growth Monitor examines future IT expectations within organizations. On those scores, the Value Monitor held steady at 77, while the Growth Monitor slipped to 67.
Compared to the last two CDW reports, the results generally seem to show improving expectations over the last year. For instance, when asked whether their IT budgets would increase over the next six months, 38 percent responded positively in June 2009. That number increased to 48 percent by April 2010, the same number as in the current survey.
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