Not expecting a rush of IT spending during the last three months of 2004, Hewlett-Packard Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina said this week that IT buyers have become smarter and more discriminating in their IT purchasing than they were just five years ago, and that they now realize that technology spending can sometimes be a "bad thing." Speaking to a room full of financial analysts at the Banc of America Securities Investment Conference in San Francisco, Fiorina dismissed the idea that corporate budget surpluses would drive an IT spending increase in the fourth quarter of 2004.
"For each of the last three years and certainly this year as well, there"s been a lot of talk that we"re going to see a fourth quarter budget flush," she said. "I just don"t see it happening."