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Early sales figures for January point to a strong IT sales and services rebound in 2010.
OnForce, an online marketplace based in Lexington, Mass. made up of more than 13,000 service technicians, said it has seen a 14 percent increase in work order volume in January compared with the year-ago period.
The upbeat OnForce forecast is in line with reports from a number of solution providers and other recent sales forecasts and economic data.
The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) Monday, for example, said that the services industry experienced a growth in unit demand in its most recent survey conducted Dec. 18 to Jan. 7. And Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm, is forecasting in 2010 a 6.8 percent increase in IT consulting/systems integration and a 7.1 percent increase in IT outsourcing sales compared with 2009.
"We are starting to see pent-up demand result in more [IT] projects getting green-lighted," said OnForce CEO Peter Cannone. "These are projects that absolutely have to get done like a Point of Sale [POS] refresh. The [IT] project market is coming back. We see slow and steady growth for 2010."
The rebound in IT project sales is in stark contrast to 2009, said Cannone. "Project work in 2009 was nearly nonexistent," he said. "There were a lot of companies that were due for a network or hardware refresh that held off because it was such a rough year. The IT downturn was deep and hard-hitting in 2009 and it prevented a lot of businesses from doing any kind of technology refresh. That pent-up demand is coming into play in 2010."
Cannone expects IT services through the OnForce platform to soar to more than $200 million in 2010, up from $150 million in 2009.
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