Similarly, this week Brocade issued a preliminary indicating strong sales for the quarter ending in October. CEO Michael Klayko said the company will outperform its sales projections from August 2008.

"Storage needs are on the rise, and storage investments will continue," Forrester's Bartels says. "We don't see cloud storage as having a meaningful impact yet."

7. New IT markets will continue to emerge, although more slowly.

Emerging economies such as China and Latin America are slowing down, but they are still expected to have IT sales increases in 2009. The Latin American market, in particular, is a solid one for IT companies such as , and , which have a strong foothold south of the border.

"In the past two to three years, Latin America has had some of the fastest growth rates in IT spending," IDC's Minton said. "Brazil is the biggest market, and it has been growing at double digits. But all of the markets in Latin America have been growing by more than 10% a year. With some exceptions, the economies there are relatively stable and have had less political turmoil than in the past. . . . This is one of the regions that we think will bounce back pretty quickly."