Information Age: News, analysis & insight for IT & business leaders

Forget concerns about the credit squeeze, the global information technology industry is showing nothing but rude health. For November, the Information Age Index, which tracks the growth of the world’s 200 largest technology companies, jumped by 0.7 percentage points to 12.3% – standing as the fastest rate of industry growth since November 2003.

The European Index, which tracks a 50-company subset drawn from the continent, continued to dip, however, falling by 0.9 percentage points to 7.6%.

The performance of systems giant HP, which last month became the first technology company to earn more than $100 billion in annual revenues, was a significant contributory factor. Its final quarterly revenues of $28.3 billion represented year-on-year growth of 15%.

Also boosting the global index was networking equipment manufacturer Cisco’s revenue hike of 17%, from $8.1 billion to $9.5 billion over the year.

Tempering the upward trend, however, were computer maker Dell, which turned in a below-par 5% growth, reaching $15.6 billion, and server and systems provider Sun Microsystems, which grew its revenues by a paltry 1% from $3.19 billion to $3.22 billion.

The continued downturn in the European Index belies some solid performances from the continent’s major software players. Financial applications vendor Sage pushed its quarterly revenues above the $1 billion threshold, up 22% from the same quarter last year, and German integration specialist Software AG grew its quarterly takings by 39%, from $155 million to $216 million.

But the spectre of Alcatel-Lucent still looms over that index; the company is still struggling to find growth following a difficult merger. The telecommunications giant saw revenues shrink by 3%, down to $5.9 billion from $6.1 billion a year ago.