IT Vendors Optimistic About the Second Half of 2010

Published: July 19, 2010

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

For as long as I have been watching this IT racket, whenever there is a recession, there is always optimism in the second half of the year, no matter how bad things are. And despite some uncertainty in the global economy, with certain areas (like Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Spain) still having their own baby meltdowns, the IT vendors are being chipper about how 2010 will end.

According to the 306 IT vendors who participated in an online survey by CompTIA, the IT Industry Business Confidence Index is going to swing up 5.4 points in the next six months, compared to a dip of 1.4 points between March and June. In the second quarter, the three component indexes that make up the overall index--one gauging sentiments of IT vendors concerning the overall economy, another about the IT industry, and the final one about their company overall--all fell a bit.

"IT industry executives remain relatively confident about the tech sector and about their firm's prospects, but concern over the health of the U.S. economy persists," explained Tim Herbert, vice president of research at CompTIA, in a statement. "In some ways, the results point to a 'two steps forward, one step back' mentality, where positive news and momentum are followed by unexpected bad news and a renewed sense of negativity about economic conditions."

The fear level concerning a stalled recovery is waning, too, with only 46 percent of those polled saying they were worried about this, down from 58 percent of those surveyed back in December 2009. The fear indexes for access to capital and consumer spending are also down among IT vendors.

IT vendors are looking to hire people in the second half, with 37 percent of those polled saying they planned to add staff in the next six months. About 47 percent said they are fully staffed but would love to add people to expand their business.

Of course, these index numbers are all theory. We won't actually know how the second half turns out until February 2011 or so. And by then--guess what?--we'll be optimistic about the second half of 2011.

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