The 7.1 percent rise in global IT spending predicted by Forrester is slightly below its estimate of a 7.2 percent rise in spending in 2010. But Bartels pointed out that the 2011 figure is, in a sense, more impressive because it comes on top of a larger spending base.

The implosion of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 sparked a virtual collapse of the financial sector, which in turn depressed spending in all sectors, including tech, in 2009.

IT spending in 2011 will bring tech back to pre-recession levels, and more. "Global spending in 2010 brought us slightly behind 2008," Bartels said. "2011 will clearly put us above 2008."

More importantly, Bartels notes, tech has resumed what Forrester considers an 8-year boom cycle that the recession covered up. Forrester analysts believe that over the past 60 years, the tech market has gone through eight-year cycles -- eight years in which the tech sector grows at twice the level of the general economy, followed by eight years during which the IT sector matches general economic growth. The period 1992-2000 was followed by an eight-year period of slower growth during which companies digested, for example, the ERP systems put in place in the 1990s.

Now, enterprises are intent on absorbing business analytics and cloud technology that makes them more responsive to client needs and better able to manage their supply lines. In fact, companies such as Tibco, Informatica and Pega Systems -- which focus on data integration and business process management software -- weathered the 2009 downturn much better than did other tech vendors, in some cases racking up steady year-over-year gains even during the depths of the recession.