The survey, of 300 professionals from the U.S. and 151 from the U.K., from companies ranging in size from having as many as 31 PCs to those with more than 500 PCs. The survey was performed by Millward Brown Research International and Lightspeed Research and took place from Dec. 15 through Dec. 31, 2008 using the . Eighty-five percent of the respondents identified themselves as IT decision makers and 15% said they were IT implementers.

The U.K. respondents had a more pessimistic view on future economic conditions compared to the U.S.; 50% of U.K. IT workers think there will be fewer jobs available in IT in the next 6 months, compared with 28% of US counterparts.

Out of 70% of the companies that indicated they have reacted with some changes to the current economic climate, 60% said they had cut their operating expenditures, almost 50% were on a hiring freeze, and 40% laid off people.

Data storage dodges the bullet

When it came to IT spending, overall budgeting on data storage technology was expected to increase by a marginal amount (.05%), but it was still in stark contrast to other hardware categories, which showed spending declines of between 2% and 3%.