The weak financial results reported for the first quarter by technology vendors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc., suggested that corporate users might be pulling back on their discretionary IT spending.

But other major vendors had strong quarters. And while some IT executives this week confirmed that economic uncertainties have led them to postpone some systems upgrades and new IT investments, other users and analysts said the current pattern is more indicative of a spending "microclimate" in which companies are simply being more selective about their IT dollars go.

"Our company is in an industry that"s a lagging indicator of the economy, so we"re kind of laying back" on making new IT investments, said Joseph Puglisi, CIO at Emcor Group Inc., a Norwalk, Conn.-based mechanical and electrical systems contractor.

Although Emcor continues to expand its use of Oracle Corp."s OneWorld XE ERP software and has just launched an identity management project to boost its IT security, "we"re not ready to undertake any major programs for the time being," Puglisi said. "We"re just doing what"s needed and making investments where there"s clear returns."

One company that has throttled back its IT spending in response to economic concerns is pharmaceutical maker Wyeth. Even though the Madison, N.J.-based company this week reported 44% growth year over year in its first-quarter profit, it has decided to postpone its PC and server replacement plans for the year "due to the overall financial environment," said CIO Bruce Fadem.

Wyeth normally replaces its PCs every three years and upgrades its servers every three to five years, according to Fadem. "We"ve pushed them all out another year for the time being," he said.

Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research Inc. in Wellesley, Mass., said he doesn"t expect many companies to reduce their IT budgets as a result of the current economic instability. But Campbell said that he is seeing a shift away from committing tens of millions of dollars to large IT projects in favor of emphasizing smaller-scale deployments that can deliver more-focused returns on investment.

It"s not uncommon for CIOs to pull back on IT spending during the first quarter in case business conditions worsen and CEOs demand technology spending cuts later in the year, said Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.

Howard Rubin, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said he has seen increased IT spending by companies this year in areas such as security and storage technologies that are needed to support Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance initiatives. But that isn"t enough to end the four-year run of sluggish IT spending, he said.

With uneven economic growth overall, "companies will be as frugal as they need to be with IT spending," Rubin said. "It"s not a happy time."

Of course, the IT spending environment is different from one company to another. At Schneider National Inc., for example, spending is up 15 percent year over year, said Bob Grawien, vice president of application development and business intelligence at the Green Bay, Wis.-based transportation provider. Grawien said the increase is being driven by a mix of internally developed systems and new implementations of off-the-shelf software.