Every January, the tech-nology industry analyst community releases a raft of predictions for the forthcoming year – some sensible; some off the wall. Here are some of the highlights:

Forrester Research: Changes are predicted in IT buying patterns, according to Forrester. Globally, the growth in IT spending will slow – after two years of 8% growth, it estimates spending in 2007 will increase by just 5%. Computer hardware and communications equipment will see the sharpest slow down; software is likely to be the fastest growing sector, where growth rates could actually inch towards double-digits.

IDC: Offshore services vendors are set to increase their presence within the enterprise, moving into higher value IT and business consulting markets. Meanwhile, the next wave in virtualisation technology will emerge, focused on continuity, disaster recovery and high availability.

Gartner: This is the year to  go green, say analysts at Gartner: “Users of IT and the IT industry risk being seen  as part of the environmental problem”. The key, its analysts warn, is to move beyond power consumption issues to look at “sustainable IT and sustainable business.”

AMR Research: AMR Research has studied budget forecasts at the national level, picking up fluc-tuations that a global perspective may miss. Most notably, UK companies are predicting that IT budgets will grow by 10.7% in 2007 – companies in France and Germany are less optimistic, predicting 3.2% and 3.8% increases respectively. “The overriding focus in all regions is better utilisation and analysis of data,” the analyst group pontificates.