Small Companies, Big Bucks

Small and midsize businesses will lead the way in IT spending growth in 2004, Forrester Research said last week in a report.

According to Forrester analyst Meredith Child, the author of a survey that polled more than 1,000 technology decision makers at small and midsize companies in North America, small and midsize businesses will increase their IT spending by 6.6% this year from 2003. That compares with an anticipated 1.7% uptick in IT spending for large companies, Child says. The three primary areas of investment are hardware--both servers and PCs--bandwidth, and security.