"I don't think it's going to return to the boom days of five years ago anytime soon," said Tom Pohlmann, who follows technology spending at Forrester Research.
And the growth that comes won't necessarily be across the board. In year-end interviews, experts offered their view of the shape of tech spending in 2004.
-- Software: The buzzword for 2004, recycled from dot-com jargon, is "enterprise" software. Broadly speaking, companies are expected to shift away from software that targets cost cutting--the overriding priority of the past three years--and toward software that backs up genuine "enterprise" or "strategic" moves.
Basically, that means companies will buy software to support new initiatives involving supply chains, security, data storage, and the way they interact with customers over the Internet.
Forrester expects overall information technology spending to grow 4 percent, but such "strategic" spending to rise 9 percent.
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