I believe IT spendings will not fall, but rather redirected to those ares which helps in increasing revenues or help in cutting costs significantly.
Many companies are laying off task oriented employees, which will put pressure on managers to perform the same task with less employees. To improve the productivity, managers will need to automate the tasks to maximum extent. Whenever automation happens, the need for better technology arises.
If it happens as above, their is a hope that IT spendings will increase.
Gireesh Kumar Sharma
Sr. Business Analyst
EmpXtrack - On Demand HR & Talent Management Software
My Blog - Talent Junction
Systems don't mean anything if you don't have the process behind it. I think we will see 2009 become a process refinement year keeping the dollars in house to clean up our own backyards. Then better leverage the best of NEED vendors for the processes we will want to automate, be interactive with , etc. in 2010.