Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

Economic signs are being reported (here, here, here, and here) that make it look like non-mortgage-crisis industries are going to get caught up in a very generalized market turndown that only began with the mortgage and foreclosure crisis.  Not surprisingly, IT spending is likely to spiral downward in our current soft economy. In fact, that is the recommendation of some experts: cut spending now in order to avoid problems later.

The Hackett Group is among those making such a recommendation. They point out that making IT cuts, along with other general and administrative cuts, should serve to positively impact the bottom line without reducing the quality of products and services that your company provides. The sort of cost reduction target they have in mind is in the area of twenty to forty percent, a significant amount of anyone’s budget.

These cuts would include both hard costs and the cost of personnel, meaning that functions such as software upgrades, hardware upgrades, customer support, new programming, general infrastructure maintenance, etc. should be in the crosshairs of the cost cutter. It is not hard to see that any negative movement in the economy is quick to evidence itself in IT. This looks like it may be a very bad economic period. Look for business technology cuts to match.