Outlook

Global markets appear to be shaking off the recent unprecedented withering of the financial system and are looking for an upturn. But is it sustainable or is it a short-term event?

So far, a string of drastic actions by the Federal Reserve and both the Bush and Obama administrations has yet to turn around a bunker mentality. Banks fear lending money to each other and to their customers. Businesses are reluctant to hire and boost capital investments. Consumers have hunkered down.

All the economy's problems are feeding off each other, creating a vicious cycle that Washington policymakers are finding difficult to break. Even if the turmoil gripping Wall Street were to let up and badly shaken confidence in the banking system were fully restored, a "broader economic recovery will not happen right away."

Obviously, the technology industry is not immune to the current economic downturn. Companies in technology groups will not only be impacted by the downturn, overall technology spending may also be curtailed significantly going forward. While lower prices on consumer electronics may help carry the tech industry through a difficult holiday shopping season, corporate spending on computer servers, PCs and business software is entering a period of slower growth that may last well into next year.

The impact on businesses is also not encouraging: Forrester is projecting that overall business information-technology sales will grow 6 percent in 2009, compared with 5.4 percent in 2008 and 7.2 percent in 2007.

Software Sector

While software stocks have suffered in kind with the market recently, we believe they generally represent a compelling opportunity, even if we are in a recession, especially relative to other technology sectors. Part of this is because many of them cater to corporations, not consumers, and corporations will likely continue spending money on maintenance even if they reduce spending on new software licenses.

The overwhelming majority of the current profit of corporate software companies is driven by maintenance, not license or consulting services. As such, profits at these companies will likely suffer less, and relative to most other technology sectors against a difficult economic backdrop.

Business and corporate across various sectors like finance, retail, telecommunication, etc. are deploying IT-enabled business solutions in order to increase their productivity and keep themselves updated with the rapidly changing global IT industry trends, translating into a high demand for IT-enabled business solutions. Other than this, the shooting rates of Internet adoption across the world and rising threats on Internet (like malware, spam and hack attacks) are bolstering the demand for IT security solutions and related software.