No company is immune from the economy's ebb and flow. So it's no surprise that, in the face of a fearsome downturn, IT shops are scrambling to figure out where they should cut.

The big three analyst firms; Forrester, Gartner, and IDC are busily slashing their IT spending projections. Just last week IDC predicted that in the United States, IT spending will decline to 0.9 percent, down sharply from a pre-crisis forecast of 4.2 percent growth.

With numbers like those, IT might feel inclined to panic. But now is the time to stand tough, advises Andrew Reichman, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research.

At brokerage and investment banking firm Morgan Keegan, for example, CIO John Threadgill acknowledges that he has to come up with better reasons for the technologies to which he allocates IT resources. But after he eliminates or delays costs where feasible, Threadgill and his CIO colleagues must continue investing in certain areas, no matter how crazily the economy bounces up or down. "We'll continue to spend where we need to," says Threadgill.

So which technologies get funded rain or shine? The five technologies IT shops must continue to invest in despite the recession. "The common theme," says Frank Gens, IDC chief analyst and senior vice president, "any technologies that can save companies money or reduce expenses will continue to thrive."

1. Storage: Disks and management software

"There are some things that just won't go back in the bottle," says Mark Raskino, Gartner fellow and Vice President, emerging trends and technologies. "Storage is one of those."

2. Business intelligence: Niche analytics

As data continues to accrue, the need to glean insights from it grows, agree analysts from Forrester, Gartner, and IDC.

CIOs will keep spending on general business intelligence, but more resources will go toward much focused analytics, explains Andrew Bartels, Principal Analyst, Forrester. The "analytics that help companies identify and retain their most profitable customers will be key," he added.

Fenn adds that companies always need behaviour analytics. In the supply chain, for instance, analytics that trigger alerts when suppliers are running into problems, such as delaying supply or payment, can deliver real value to companies.

The broader range of data sources will lead to greater need for analytics," he further added. "There are many different masters, as companies tap analytics to cut costs, avoid errors, predict behaviour of customers before they lose them and grow market opportunities."

3. Virtualisation: Optimising resources

Virtualisation is the data-centre version of getting the most out of what you already have. Up-front investment in virtualisation tends to be fairly low, but can deliver quick and substantial returns. "Virtualisation will continue to be popular because it allows companies to defer other costs - in this case, that's mostly hardware," IDC's Gens says.

Spec-savers began tapping virtualisation before the downturn. "Virtualisation is a key tactic we've been doing for some time to minimise hardware acquisition costs," Khan says, "and that will continue." 

Virtualisation has advantages beyond hardware cost reduction. "Everybody's moving to virtualisation," Forrester's Reichman says. "You're likely to be more efficient with server and storage resources in the long run, and if you have expertise, that return is likely to come fast. A down economy might be the right time to throw down and do it, especially if you can time it with hardware refreshes."

"Converting from a physical to a virtual infrastructure is particularly beneficial during tough economic conditions," Biddlecombe says. "Virtualisation has allowed us to save on power and cooling costs as well as the amount of time our IT staff spends on server admin. It provides us with more efficient use of capital as well as increased flexibility during challenging times."

4. Security: Data and end points

No surprises here. IDC's Gens, in fact, says that security is "always the number one concern of IT. As you see more resources out there on the Internet, there's concern that they're secure."

Companies will have a particular focus on securing network end points, devices, and those applications that serve them, according to IDC's Minton. "Whether you're in a recession or not, no company wants to be on the front page of bad lists because their data was breached," he adds.

Threadgill lists security as the second of Morgan Keegan's top two spending priorities, behind only storage. And Spec-savers' Khan adds that his budget will include security technologies, namely firewalls, tools for securing end points, and data encryption for mobile devices and remote PCs. "There's no reduction in security expenses," Khan says. "If anything we're increasing our security spending."

Gartner and Forrester agree that companies will continue to ratchet up security. Raskino adds that layoffs and, in turn, new hires will be yet another driver. "An economic downturn and recovery create massive churn," he says. "The processes and tools for managing and disabling access are going to be critical."

5. Cloud computing: Business solutions

Analysts from Forrester, Gartner, and IDC say that certain pieces of cloud computing will continue to expand and perhaps even accelerate due to the downturn.

Gens sees many companies moving to the cloud for the applications and services most often sought by business types, who are actually circumventing the IT department to get what they need. These include such business solutions as sales-force automation, productivity, and marketing campaign software. "The more pure IT stuff-infrastructure, infrastructure software and application development; those are tech buyers, so there are fewer potential customers," Gens says.

"Cloud-based data backup and file storage services are a really good idea that can be much more cost-effective than going it the old-fashioned, in-house way," Reichman says.

Gartner's Raskino adds to the list of cloud resources CIOs will find valuable during a recession such services as e-mail, storage, and lightweight productivity apps. "This is a good time to have a cost-centric argument, so IT might even take a risk to get a payoff with cloud technologies, if they're mature enough," he says.

Looking toward recovery

IT spending will make a full recovery and enjoy growth rates nearing six percent by 2012, according to IDC.

Whether such projections hold or not, Reichman argues that IT shops must trim their sails and stay the course. "You cannot stop growing," he explains. "Most companies are already fire-fighting, but you've got keep the lights on, keep things going forward, because the data-centre is always in a recession anyway. So keep moving."

Ninety percent of the young people who seek treatment for compulsive computer gaming are not addicted, research says.

The Smith and Jones Centre in Amsterdam, has treated hundreds of young gamers since 2006. But the clinic is changing its treatment as it realises that compulsive gaming is a social rather than a psychological problem.

The clinic has had very high success rate of treating people who also show other addictive behaviours such as drug taking and excessive drinking, said Bakker, a psychologist. But this kind of cross-addiction affects only 10 percent of gamers. For the other 90 percent who may spend four hours a day or more playing games, the clinic doctors no longer think addiction counselling is the way to treat these patients. These patients, especially kids come in showing some kind of symptoms that are similar to other addictions and chemical dependencies.

"But the more we work with these kids the less I believe we can call this an addiction. What many of these kids need is their parents and their school teachers - this is a social problem," he further added.

In response to this realisation the clinic has changed its treatment programme for gamers to focus more on developing activity-based social and communications skills to help them rejoin society.

"This gaming problem is a result of the society we live in today," told Bakker. "Eighty percent of the young people we see have been bullied at school and feel isolated. Many of the symptoms they have can be solved by going back to good old fashioned communication."

By offering compulsive gamers a place where they feel accepted and where their voice will be heard, the clinic has found that the vast majority have been able to leave gaming behind and rebuild their lives.

For Bakker, the root cause of the huge growth in excessive gaming lies with parents who have failed in their duty of care.

But he is quick to point out that 87 percent of online gamers are over the age of 18 and once they cross that line, help is something they need to seek for themselves because they get beyond the parents' control.

For younger gamers, intervention may be the only way to break the cycle. That means stepping in and sometimes literally taking a child away from a computer, removing them from the game for a period of time until they become aware of their habits and begin to see there are other choices.

"It's a choice," he says, "these kids know exactly what they are doing and they just don't want to change. If no one is there to help them, then nothing will ever happen."

One patient, who is 18-year old gamer, being treated at the clinic, he was spending at least 10 hours a day playing until he sought help at the centre.

"I was never helped by my parents or my school. At the clinic I also feel accepted and have come out of myself," says patient.

He kept his gaming problem a secret as much as he could but when he did tell people, he says that no one offered him help.

"I liked gaming because people couldn't see me, they accepted me as my online character - I could be good at something and feel part of a group."

"I was aware that I played too much but I didn't know what to do. But it helped me because I could be aggressive and get my anger and frustration out online," he further added.

This kind of aggression is not uncommon in young gamers who feel frustrated with their real lives. Besides addiction, aggression and violence form part of the ongoing debate about the influence of gaming on impressionable minds.

Bakker believes that if there was more commitment from parents and other care givers to listen to what their children are saying then these issues of isolation and frustration could be dealt with at source and bring many young people out of the virtual world and back into real life.

All the criminals are happy to work together to steal money from credit cards and bank accounts. This is because card numbers stolen in one country can only be 'cashed out' in their home nation - necessitating contact across borders

Hi-tech thieves who specialise in card fraud have a credit line in excess of $5bn, research suggests.

Security firm Symantec calculated the figure to quantify the scale of fraud it found during a year-long look at the net's underground economy.

Credit card numbers are the most popular item on sale and made up 31 percent of all the goods on offer.

Coming in second are bank details which made up 20 percent of the items being offered on criminal chat channels.

The $5.3bn figure was reached by multiplying the average amount of fraud perpetrated on a stolen card, $350 by the many millions Symantec observed being offered for sale.

Similarly, the report said, "if hi-tech thieves plundered all the bank accounts offered for sale they could net up to $1.7bn."

Symantec said, "these figures are indicative of the value of the underground economy and the potential worth of the market."

"Credit card numbers have proved so popular among hi-tech thieves because they are easy to obtain and use for fraudulent purposes," it added.

Many of the methods favoured by cyber criminals, such as database attacks and magnetic strip skimmers, are designed to steal credit card information.

The existence of a ready market for any stolen data and the growing use of credit cards also helped maintain their popularity, it said.

"High frequency use and the range of available methods for capturing credit card data would generate more opportunities for theft and compromise and, thus, lead to an increased supply on underground economy servers," said the report.

The price card thieves can expect for the numbers they offer for sale also varied by the country of origin. US card numbers are the cheapest because they are so ubiquitous – 74 percent of all cards offered for sale were from the US.

By contrast numbers from cards issued in Europe and the Middle East commanded a premium because they were relatively rare.

The year-long look at the underground economy confirmed to Symantec how serious and organised cyber thieves have become.

Via the covert chat channels and invitation-only discussion forums hi-tech thieves form loose alliances, contact those who specialise in one technique or find individuals who can extract cash from particular credit cards .

Russian and Eastern European gangs seem to be among the most well-organised, said the report. But, it said, all the criminals are happy to work together to steal money from credit cards and bank accounts. This is because card numbers stolen in one country can only be 'cashed out' in their home nation - necessitating contact across borders.

"Symantec research indicates that there is a certain amount of collaboration and organisation occurring on these forums, especially at the administrative level," it said.

"Moreover, considerable evidence exists that organised crime is involved in many cases."

Following the high profile launches of the Blackberry Bold and the Blackberry Storm, RIM continues its assault on the smartphone market with Javelin. Carphone Warehouse has said that the Blackberry Javelin will be released exclusively in its stores just in time for Christmas on 20 December 2008, with the moniker 'Curve 8900'. Carphone Warehouse could not confirm to IT PRO anything regarding pricing or the network carrier, but did say that the Javelin will have the, "sharpest screen, for the brightest, sharpest icons". At first glance the Javelin looks similar to RIM's Blackberry Bold, featuring a Qwerty keyboard and a trackball. It also has GPS with Blackberry Maps and a 3.2-megapixel camera on the rear. However, it is intended as an entry-level product and lacks 3G connectivity.

Boffins at IBM have teamed up with five universities to use the human brain as a template to build faster, smaller computer systems that benefit decision making. Working with experts at Columbia University Medical Centre, Cornell University, Stanford University, the University of California-Merced and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, IBM Research plans to design and develop computers that simulate and emulate how the brain acts, interacts, perceives and senses things, in addition to mirroring its cognition, lower power usage and size. In doing so, it is hoped that business and consumer users alike will be able to make decisions much more quickly as well as helping them to deal with the ever-increasing glut of digital data heading their way each year.