Wall Street turmoil unlikely to affect IT industry

Despite high-profile troubles this week--first involving Bank of America's purchase of Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy filing, and then AIG's attempting to secure billions in emergency funding--the prognosis is that while spending on IT will slow down until 2009, negative growth is unlikely to be experienced. This view was put forth by Gartner analyst Ken McGee, who also noted how Lehman Brothers actually pumped up its IT expenditure despite knowing the troubled waters it was heading toward. Forrester Research analyst Ellen Carney agrees, saying that because of the critical advantage afforded by IT, major financial firms have already budgeted their IT expenses despite knowing about the meltdown. Major financial firms are traditionally big drivers in the IT industry, with hundreds of billions spent to maintain and upgrade old equipment.

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