"The project delays that occurred over the last three years have really impacted companies' ability to be nimble and efficient," says Speer. "So many companies kicked off projects toward the end of last year, and they are working really, really hard to get those across the [finish] line."

Speer says Technisource's clients in the financial services industry started a lot of projects at the end of 2010. They're getting close to finishing them up and plan to start new ones, he says. Technisource's retail clients are also in the middle of a slew of IT projects.

Freeland also believes IT hiring will remain strong through the remainder of the year simply because "businesses across the board are so dependent on IT infrastructure and technology, that slowing down or stopping is impossible," he says.

Tom Richards, COO of CDW, expects that businesses will continue to invest in IT through the end of the year as a way to cut costs or improve productivity, as they've done in previous downturns. The IT hiring and budget survey CDW conducted in early June shows that 90 percent of IT decision makers at large companies and 89 percent of IT decision makers at midsize companies plan to purchase new hardware over the next six months. Approximately 40 percent of IT leaders plan to install new software over the next six months. Virtualization, cloud computing, mobility and security are also high spending priorities for CIOs over the next six months, according to the CDW survey.

Speer says are also spurring companies to hire contract and permanent IT staff. They need IT workers to plan and carry out these implementations, to integrate other enterprise applications with it, and in many cases to upgrade the hardware that the software will run on, he adds.