Meet the Street: Third-Quarter Tech-Spending Survey Results Surprise

Techtel of Emeryville, Calif., tracks market demand for information technology spending in 40 categories and nearly 100 companies. The firm has been conducting its demand growth study every quarter since 1984, and its data are used by the likes of Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch to gauge demand in the sector.

Michael Kelly Chairman and Chief Architect, Techtel

Recent Meet the Streets

David L. Babson's Ethan Hugo

Dutch Holland, Author

Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein's Adam Greene

65-yr Veteran Floor Broker Michael Pascuma

TSC recently caught up with Michael Kelly, Techtel's chairman and chief architect, to discuss the results of its most recent survey, which included the period of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

As Kelly tells us, the results were somewhat surprising.

TSC: You guys basically do surveys of demand for technology spending. What do you guys look at in your reports?

Kelly: We have a quarterly report that goes out to buyers of technology. The technology buyers are both IT people and non-IT people who are also involved in the technology buying for corporations of all sizes. There are about 40 categories that we cover, and the index that we've got here is basically covering eight of the categories for enterprise level, and for general business level.

The four categories that are included in the enterprise level are mainframes, high-end servers, mid-range servers, low-end servers and high-end storage. In the general business it's PCs, notebooks, copiers and printers. Those go in to make up the quarterly demand tracking index that we have.

TSC: For the third quarter there were some interesting results. One is that overall, things have remained stable, despite the Sept. 11 attacks. What did you guys see along those lines? ...