IT budgets are not going to return to pre-recession levels following the contraction in the market, and resellers must prepare for the current spending constraints to continue.
That warning was sounded by Chris Ingle, an analyst at IDC, at a customer briefing this morning to promote the forthcoming launch of Windows 7.
"In some areas spending won't get back... and we need to prepare for that contraction," said Ingle.
He said the obvious thing for the IT industry to do was to look to claw back money from other areas, in particular to drive down maintenance costs which have consistently taken chunks of the budget for the last couple of decades.
"We need to plan for uncertainty and if you did have a budget for infrastructure then you are not going to get that back [to pre-recessionary levels], certainly not in the short-term," he said.
Agreeing with his views of the market Nina Sundberg, Windows client commercial business group lead, said that the current trading conditions had to be seen as the "new normal".
"Don't look at how things were before. This is the new normal," she said.