It's been a tough year, but there is plenty of evidence that it won't be getting easier next year, according to Gartner analyst Mark McDonald. In a recent talk, he said IT budgets for 2010 will pick up after 2009, which has been a year of incredibly tight budgets--88 percent of all companies budget cuts.

So how is this recovery different from others? The coming uptick will bring IT budgets back to where they were in 2006, he told ZNet.com. It will still be tough going because CIOs will have the same priorities they've had for the last three years without extra money to make it happen. So there will continue to be plenty of ground that needs to be made up when things get going again. 

Two Gartner experts, Ken McGee and Dale Kutnick, call the new normal the era of zero percent IT growth. 2010 will be a year of new priorities without the money to do it, they say.

So what's a CIO to do? Get creative, apply the knowledge you've learned in this year's downturn, work harder at consolidation and, unfortunately, continue to put off projects that don't need to be done right now.

For more on tough times for the CIO:
- see this ZNet.com article

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