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The steady decline in IT sector growth during the past year seems to have come to an end - with the industry settling around 8% to 9%. The Infoconomy Global Index, which charts the rate of revenue picture at the world's 200 largest IT companies, shows growth in September up by a fraction to 8.8%.

This stabilisation of revenue growth has been supported in the main by European technology companies, as few US businesses issued financial reports in September. The European Index, which collates the revenue growth of the European subset of the Global Index, jumped a percentage point to 8.1%.

Companies whose results impacted positively on the European growth index (and so fed into the overall index) include services providers Capgemini and LogicaCMG, which published solid revenue growth of 17% and 11%, respectively.

One US bellwether that did report financial results in September was enterprise software vendor Oracle, which grew its revenue by 25%. Although much of that growth was acquisition-driven, the magnitude of the company's revenues had a major positive influence on the index's rise.

Among companies that muted the upturn with below-par performances were UK services company Computacenter, which saw first half revenues shrink by 6%. However, all of the other companies clocking up more than a billion dollars (or equivalent) in their latest reporting period managed double digit growth, suggesting the consolidation under way in many divisions within the IT industry is making it appear healthier than it actually is.

The Infoconomy 200 Index measures the overall growth rate of the IT industry by tracking the financial results of the world's most important publicly listed IT companies. For more details, go to www.infoconomy.com.