IT's good attitude defies the gloom

Keep IT at the heart of successful business

And here is the good news… Apple and IBM are doing very well, thank you. Record financial results all round.

That’s that bit over. Now for the bad news.

Five thousand layoffs at Microsoft and another 5,000 at Ericsson. IT job cuts at Axa and Unisys. Let’s stop there before it gets worse.

Are you getting as fed up as we are by the constant stream of depressing stories emanating from the business world, and in particular the IT sector?

Computing is the first to admit that we are not slow in reporting such bad news, but sadly it is a fact of life at the moment. We’ll be the first to bring you the good news too, it’s just a little harder to find right now.

Nonetheless, it is heartening to see that IT managers are approaching the difficult times ahead with a mood of realism rather than being disheartened.

The first of what will be a regular quarterly survey of readers’ attitudes, the Computing Technology Barometer, shows that IT leaders are being cautious but not downbeat.

They expect little by way of budget increases, and are wary of the latest products and services being pushed at them by vendors, but where there are opportunities to deliver real benefits from the right technologies, they are forging ahead.

It is important to remember that driving change through IT does not necessarily mean buying lots of new products. There are often plenty of ways to make better, faster or smarter use of what you already have –­ and when you see well-established trends such as virtualisation, mobile computing and data security highlighted as priorities in our research, the implication is clear –­ IT leaders have become very good at making the most of a tough time.

So to borrow a phrase that someone else borrowed in a rather more important speech last week, let’s pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep IT at the heart of successful business.