In October, Forrester projected overall spending for IT hardware
and software would grow by 8% in the U.S. next year; today it lowered that
growth estimate to 5%.
That news may not be all bad, Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels said today in a conference call. In fact, 2008 appears to be shaping up as a replay of 2007, when IT spending started slowly but then recovered as the year wore on.
IT spending for software, computers and communications equipment will hit an estimated $377 billion this year and is projected to rise to $394 billion next year, according to Forrester. The Cambridge, Mass.-based firm said total IT spending, which includes expenditures on hardware, software, IT salaries and outsourcing, will be an estimated $775 billion this year, rising to an estimated $815 billion in 2008.
In his report, Bartels said that while the overall U.S. numbers are being revised downward, economic data still indicates the U.S. will avoid a recession.
You
know you need to give continuous network access to a wide range of legitimate
users. Not just your staff but visiting contractors, business partners, and
guests. And you know you need 
Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity and security experts at
Janco have identified several critical steps in planning for disaster and
subsequent recovery.1. Determine how the event will impact four key areas:
· People: How will you notify, evacuate, transport and care for employees?
· Property: What equipment will you need and how will you source it?
· Systems: What portions of your computing and telecommunications infrastructure must be duplicated immediately? How much downtime can your operation tolerate?
· Data: What data is critical to run your business, and how will you recover critical data that is lost?
2. Determine which data, applications and systems must be restored and in what sequence. Prioritize systems as critical, vital, sensitive or noncritical, and talk to users at all levels to make sure youÂ’re not overlooking any crucial systems.
3. Analyze the hardware and software configurations that support critical business functions and isolate possible points of failure.
4. Quantify hourly costs based on interruptions of these systems.
Each of
these is included in the Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Template that
can be found at 
An RPO of greater than zero, for
example 30 minutes, can be handled differently. An RPO of 30 minutes means the
customer can tolerate losing the last 30 minutes of transactions in the event of
a site failure. If the disaster