IT purchases will rise 7.1 percent this year compared with 2010, to US$1.69 trillion, according to Forrester. Gartner, which unlike Forrester includes telecommunications in its forecast, at $3.6 trillion in 2011, a 5.1 percent increase from 2010.

After a strong 2010, the sustained spending growth, fueled especially by enterprise software and mobile-device purchases, bodes well for IT vendors.

Even though most IT bellwethers last year easily outperformed 2009 quarterly results, confidence in the technology sector wavered in mid-2010 as fears of a double-dip recession took hold. Concerns about anemic job growth and continuing mortgage defaults in the U.S., and the specter of sovereign debt default in countries including Greece, Spain and Ireland, depressed the share values of tech companies on exchanges in the third quarter.

Starting in September, a string of strong, in some cases record, financial results from vendors including Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM helped renew confidence, leading to a technology-led rally in the markets. Share values of computer companies on the Nasdaq, for example, are now on average about 21 percent higher than they were a year ago.

The macroeconomic concerns of 2010 remain, but to a large degree, they have dissipated. "The fact that Democrats and Republicans reached agreement on tax cuts and an additional stimulus has gone a long way toward reducing concerns about a double-dip recession," said Forrester analyst Andrew Bartels. Forrester will be putting out its new Global Tech Industry Outlook next week.