The US market meltdown: what it means for IT

Shares of technology vendors are bouncing back after hitting a seven-year low Monday, but bad news including dour reports on the mobile and components sectors are a reminder that the continuing recession makes the beginning of a sustained comeback unlikely.

Pat Beemer, IT director for Seattle Lighting, has a lot of orphaned computer hardware and unused software licenses on his hands -- the result of what he calls "serious" layoffs at the company.

The results of a survey of about 450 technology professionals released Wednesday found that of 26 technology categories, data storage was the only technology for which spending would increase this year.

At its CIO Summit, Microsoft told government and education IT managers to figure out how to do "more with less" during the economic recession.

Signs everywhere point to the plight of the laid-off tech worker. Tech consultancy BearingPoint files for bankruptcy. Hewlett-Packard's profits plummet. Silicon Valley employment falls for the first time in several years. With daily layoffs and few new jobs available, techies have seen their careers careening off track -- and now they need to reinvent themselves or get off the tech train altogether.

It's official: IT budgets, once so resilient in the face of three years of worsening economic news, aren't immune to the downturn after all.

No company is immune from the economy's ebb and flow. So it's no surprise that, in the face of a fearsome downturn, IT shops are scrambling to figure out where they should cut.

Now that the government has pledged US$700 billion to bail out the financial banking industry and is considering lending $25 billion to help the auto industry avoid bankruptcy, many tech companies may be wondering where to get their hands on government bailout cash. While tech companies may not have the same level of clout among Washington policy makers as AIG or General Motors, some of the industry's biggest players have been hit hard times in recent months and could certainly use a health infusion of cash to help them right their ships. Here's our take on the five biggest tech companies that are most in need of a helping government bail out.

Last year we talked about CIOs - who are both the masters and the victims of doubletalk and who are under enormous pressure to provide more to their users and at the same time, trying to keep spending under control.

If you've had any money in the stock market, it's been a bloodbath the last few weeks. It's hard to remember that any 10-year period in stock market history has always ended up with better returns than any other investment. As financial analysts argue over whether we are already in or just headed into a deep global recession, we are facing a rough, contracting period. People with good jobs are holding on to them tighter than ever.

There's no doubt that we live in tough times after a week like this one. And while I'm not a financial analyst, I have a suggestion: Let's all take a deep breath and spend a few moments thinking about the counterintuitive actions we should be taking to help the tech industry and ourselves.

At first, this was going to be a column about the PR machine's hyperbolic efforts to connect the state of IT and security with the current financial crisis. Indeed, some have shamelessly sent me story pitches that try to get some bang out of the Wall Street meltdown.