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The IT industry is continuing its slide back to single digit growth. According to the Infoconomy Index, which tracks the overall revenue growth of the world's top 200 IT companies, the sector's pace slowed again in February to 10.2%, down from 11.0% in the previous month. That was despite a sustained resurgence among the subset of European companies in the Index, where growth increased from 5.0% to 6.6% over the month.

Impacting the global picture were some weak numbers from several major IT services, systems software and storage suppliers. EDS, the world's second largest services company, reported revenues down 5% in its latest quarter, and storage product vendors, ADIC and McData, saw their revenues shrink by 6% and 7%, respectively. Several others showed positive but below average growth: systems management software company, BMC, reported a 3% increase in revenues, IT service company CSC posted 6% growth, and middleware vendor BEA reported a 5% rise.

But keeping the index hovering around the 10% mark were strong results from some industry giants. Hewlett-Packard turned in the industry par, Dell recorded a 17% jump in revenues and Cisco chalked up 12%. And to prove that results are moving in both directions in the storage sector, Network Appliance reported a 39% hike in sales.

Meanwhile, the revival of Europe's indigenous IT industry continued. At 6.6%, growth is at its highest since March 2002, but at least some of that stems directly from acquisitions. France's Business Objects reported a 45% jump in quarterly revenues, largely due to the grafting on of Crystal Decisions. The story was similar at WM-data, the Swedish IT services company, where the company's combination with fellow Nordic services outfit, Novo Group, was a major factor in a growth rate of 31%.

Despite such artificial influences, the underlying global growth rate is still heading back to single figures in the coming months.

	Infoconomy index of IT sector growth