Wednesday, 12 March 2003  8:30 am
Virtually everyone is saying that "geopolitical uncertainties" are the reasons behind slow sales, falling stocks, and rising unemployment.  News commentators, Wall Street analysts, CEOs, and Federal Reserve

But a recent survey of CIOs by Goldman Sachs, released yesterday, paints a different picture.  The CIOs told Goldman that their information technology spending would grow only 1% this year from the depressed spending levels last year. Importantly, only 19% of the CIOs thought that an easing of geopolitical tensions will cause them to increase their technology spending. "Although this proportion is not inconsequential, it seems clear that the potential impact of conflict overseas is only a factor on the margin," wrote Goldman analysts Rick Sherlund and Laura Conigliaro.

This new survey, plus another one released on Monday, unfortunately fill in the picture reported here on March 5 that the "good-enough computing" phenomenon is gaining acceptance in the corporate world. In the Goldman survey, 72% of the respondents said "incremental budget tightening is more likely than budget loosening," meaning that even the 1% growth is in question. That survey also confirmed what was reported here yesterday that IBM and Dell are gaining server market share from H-P and Sun.

Another CIO survey by the Aberdeen Group was a bit more optimistic, coming to the conclusion that information technology spending will increase by 2.7% this year, which was down from the 3.7% growth they estimated 6 months ago.

The stock investors have caught on as well, and have been hammering those companies most at risk by the "good-enough computing" phenomenon. In the last 3 months H-P stock has declined 17%, Microsoft 15%, Intel 12%, PeopleSoft 12%, SAP 7.6%, Cisco 6.6%, IBM 6.3%, Intuit 6.1%, all exceeding the overall NASDAQ decline in the same period of 6%.