Research from Aberdeen Group has hinted at a recovery in IT spending, after user firms said they were planning to increase their spending in the second half of the year.

A survey of Aberdeen's user advisory panel indicates that IT executives planned to increase spending by nearly 4% over the next six months. This compares to a forecast decline of 1.4% in February of this year. Additionally, the Boston, Massachusetts-based market analysis and positioning firm's research also found that year-on-year revenues among the top 20 IT suppliers declined only 3.5% in the second quarter of 2002, which represented the best performance of the last five quarters.

It is too early to say whether the market has turned a corner, or merely swerved temporarily. Even though some IT vendors are registering nominal growth in certain sectors, the IT market as a whole is not displaying any sustained positive growth.

Perhaps a plausible explanation is that the market has hit 'rock bottom', and is now bouncing upwards, giving the impression of the start of a sustained recovery. But ComputerWire believes that it will be well into 2003 and even 2004 before the market returns to double-digit growth. For the time being, the findings of Aberdeen's research essentially mirrors the overall state of an economy that is slowly, but erratically, clawing its way towards the light at the end of the tunnel.

© ComputerWire