Amid Tech's Bleating, SAP's Got Bark

"We expect BMC(BMC Quote) and Hewlett-Packard(HPQ Quote) to be the primary beneficiaries of this spend as they have the market leading solutions in this space," wrote Heather Bellini, an analyst at UBS, in a statement.

H-P shares are priced at around $34, well below their 52-week high of $52.90, although the company beat Wall Street's revenue estimates in its recent fourth-quarter results, and is seen as well-equipped to weather the current economic storm.

Shares of BMC, which recently announced plans to cut 6% of its workforce, are trading around $26, compared to their 52-week high of $40.87.

CIOs however, were lukewarm in their response to some of the supposedly hottest IT trends.

Spending on virtualization software, which has been touted as the next big thing in the tech sector, is expected to slow in 2009. Despite being championed by VMware(VMW Quote) and Microsoft, UBS found that most IT chiefs expect virtualization spending to be flat. Overall, virtualization spending growth is expected to slip from 10% in 2008 to 6% in 2009.

Virtualization, which lets users run multiple operating systems on the same hardware, may have driven VMware's 2007 $1.7 billion IPO, although relatively few CIOs cited the company specifically in UBS's survey.

"This may suggest that while virtualization is a trend that is no doubt here to stay, it still does not have the collective mindshare as many might think," wrote Bellini.

Despite UBS's overall findings, the investment research firm found that the overall IT spending picture is not all doom and gloom. Even though around 60% of respondents expect tech spending to decrease next year, almost a third told the investment research company that their tech budget will increase, with the remainder foreseeing no change.