11:58 PM
Spending Stats
At a recent TowerGroup conference in Boston, Rob Hegarty, vice president of TowerGroup's securities and investments practice, revealed updated spending forecasts. Hegarty estimates that the North American securities market will spend $71.5 billion on technology this year, representing a 1.4 percent increase over the $69.9 billion spent in 2003.
"It's barely increasing," Hegarty says. Though an improvement over recent years' spending, this is still far below the highs in IT spending of $86.2 billion back in 2000.