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Report: Feds Ready to Spend

Data center vendors can look forward to a steady stream of federal IT spending continuing on its upward trajectory, regardless of who wins the upcoming elections. These are the findings of the latest research from analyst firm Input.

The months surrounding an election are often a nervous time for vendors, who worry about the effect of a new government on the federal cash cow. Some enterprise customers even slow their IT spending down at election time (see CyberGuard Survives Q1 Hurricanes).

But, regardless of who is installed in the White House on January 20, the federal governments budget for IT spending looks to be overflowing for the next few years. Input says that Washington will spend $23 billion on technology procurement in fiscal year 2009, 35 percent more than in 2004.

Data center suppliers will be rubbing their hands -- large-scale systems, such as supercomputers, will account for $8 billion of the 2009 figure, with servers weighing in with an additional $7.5 billion, says Input.

Chris Campbell, senior analyst at Input, thinks it unlikely that a new government would reverse this trend. “The IT agenda will not change that much," he says. "There was very little change in the underlying IT goals of the Clinton and Bush administrations."

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