New Horizons

Sept. 11 changed the world. On a smaller scale, it also changed the world of IT. It changed the way customers prioritize projects. The way they allocate budgets. The people they trust to make purchasing decisions. It's a new game in IT. And to win, you need to know how to play.

"Even before Sept. 11, the economy had been the major story this year. But since then, clients have been very hesitant to spend money [at all]," confirms Ed Coleman, chairman and CEO of $2.7 billion Dallas-based integrator CompuCom Systems.

The effects of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, piled on top of an already weakened economy, have caused a major cutback in IT spending among users whose pocketbooks were opened much more freely just a few short quarters ago.

"Everything came to a halt in mid-September," says Dave Hand, general manager of Right Systems of Idaho, a Boise-based technology-management-services company. "Everyone became paralyzed and inwardly focused. After about 10 days or so, people shook the cobwebs off, picked up and kept moving. But [the attacks] definitely changed people's perceptions and their confidence going forward."

Coleman and Hand aren't alone in their views. In fact, more than one-third (34 percent) of the solution providers polled after Sept. 11 in VARBusiness' annual State of the Market (SOM) survey said they expect their clients' IT spending to decrease in 2002. Before the attacks, only 13 percent were predicting decreases, a wide margin to say the least.

Still, it's important to keep all this in perspective. VARBusiness' post-attack SOM research also reveals that 43 percent of VARs expect customers to keep their estimated 2002 IT budgets intact, and 23 percent expect them to increase their budgets. That's a positive sign, but it doesn't negate the effects the attacks on America, political conflict, and the economic downturn have had on VARs' bottom lines and on their customers' belt-tightening policies.

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