Recession Delays But Doesn't Necessarily Kill Client IT Projects: Study

Of those questioned in the survey, only 12 percent said that they have canceled a planned project since October 2008. The survey was conducted from late February through early March, and polled 475 IT decision makers in nine countries, including the U.S.

"Enterprise belt-tightening has had a tremendous impact on the client computing technology segment with 43 percent of respondents expecting a decrease in spending on client computing hardware in 2009 compared with 2008," said Andrew Johnson, managing vice president at Gartner, in a statement.

Gartner forecasts that overall IT spending will fall 3.7 percent in 2009. The biggest budget cuts are expected in IT hardware, including client computing (PCs), servers, storage and printing systems spending. The outlook for 2010 looks better. The research firm predicts that spending will rebound with 2.4 percent growth in 2010. However, the hardware segment will show very little improvement, increasing a mere 0.8 percent.

The survey also revealed distinctions by country in spending, maintaining or canceling ongoing client projects.

"While 48 percent of all respondents said that some of their PC projects would be deployed as planned this year, respondents in China (85 percent) and India (64 percent) were more optimistic and expected most of their projects to be deployed as planned," Gartner said. "In contrast, only 29 percent of U.S. and 18 percent of French companies planned to continue their client computing projects as originally scheduled."

In addition, the survey found that there were major vertical market variations among industries. IT planners said they were on track to complete projects for companies in the insurance, media and consumer business services segments.

Telecommunications, wholesale and agriculture, mining and construction firms are most likely to be planning to reduce spending on IT projects.

Gartner also determined that project postponements are more likely in retail, utilities and wholesale companies, and project cancellations were above average in discrete manufacturing. Only one out of 45 respondents in the financial services industry said that PC purchase plans were cancelled.