With a widespread economic downturn well underway, top managers are prioritizing cost reduction as never before—and they are looking for new solutions and proven practices. It’s inevitable that cost-cutting efforts will land heavily on IT, since it is a significant cost center and because it impacts costs in almost every business activity.

With the chaos of the financial markets imploding over the past few weeks, it is easy to imagine a crunch in information technology budgets and associated spending in 2009.  The analyst community has quickly revised their spending forecasts downward.  According to Peter Sondergaard of Gartner, IT spending will rise 2.3% in 2009, down from an earlier projection of 5.8% with the US and Western European markets being hit the hardest.

“Innovate! We need to grow!” thunders the CEO. Yet not much seems to happen. Efforts peter out, or just never really get started. Business as usual seems to remain the order of the day.