There are hopeful glimmers that the long-anticipated yet elusive recovery in the information technology business may finally be coming into view.
Besides the recent surge in technology shares on Wall Street there are more substantive signs like the fact that orders for many computer products and semiconductors are stabilizing and even gradually gaining ground.
Yet many skeptics remain. And even if a recovery is indeed getting under way, industry analysts say, it promises to be a pretty sober affair -- slow and uneven.
Instead of leading the economy, as it did in the 1990s, the technology sector is being pulled along with it, behaving more like other industries and less like a business that operates by its own "new economy" rules.
And so it may be that Wall Street has gotten ahead of itself, acting as if an old-fashioned tech rebound were under way.
Stock prices on the NASDAQ, where many technology companies are listed, are up roughly 30 percent since March 11. And the Standard & Poor's 500 Information Technology Index is up about 50 percent since hitting a recent low last October.
Perhaps the most significant reason to expect only a measured, plodding recovery is the changed attitudes of, and new pressures on, the corporate buyers of information technology -- computer hardware, software and services -- whose buying habits largely control the industry's fate.
Long gone is the irrational optimism of the `90s and the notion that technology alone can transform a business. Today, corporate executives regard technology as simply a tool -- though a crucial one, if used wisely.
But it is also a costly tool: Information technology accounts for nearly 60 percent of all business investment in equipment. So there is plenty of incentive to restrain spending.
Technology is still a big corporate expense, but technology budgets have flattened out, if not fallen, at most companies.
That is a very different world for senior corporate technology executives, often called chief information officers, or CIOs, who for years were accustomed to having their budgets rise by 10 percent to 20 percent annually.
"CIOs, after years of being asked to do more with more, are being asked in a serious way to do more with less," said Richard Hunter, a research fellow at Gartner Inc, a technology research firm.
When it surveyed more than 600 CIOs worldwide earlier this year, Gartner found that their top three goals, in order of importance, were cutting costs, shoring up information security and supporting innovation.
"It shows you how much pressure CIOs are under, when cutting costs is No. 1 and supporting innovation is No. 3," Hunter observed.
Corporate spending plans remain crimped. According to a survey in May by CIO Magazine, corporate technology executives said on average that they expected their purchases of information technology to increase by just 3.3 percent over the next 12 months.
In 2000, technology executives projected increases of 15 percent to 20 percent in the magazine's monthly surveys.
Even technology vendors that have thrived through the downturn, like Microsoft, acknowledge the shift in attitudes among corporate customers.
In his yearly status report e-mailed to Microsoft's 54,000 employees earlier this month, Steven Ballmer, the chief executive of the company, noted the tenuous situation.
"As I talk to business customers, there is less passion and enthusiasm for technology, and greater focus on doing more with less," he said.
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