Speaking at the Gartner Tech Investor Summit in New York last week, Al Lill, group vice president of the company said, "We are now seeing a true recovery in the making".
"There is a key combination of technology advances, architectural changes, market forces and best practices in place to lead a good recovery for IT in the near future and culminating in very strong growth in the longer term," he continued.
According to Gartner, the recovery will be accompanied by a tremendous skills shift within the IT workforce, impacting hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers.
Areas in which skills will be most highly valued include broadband, wireless, Linux, content management, real-time analytics, data mining, security, middleware, certification skills, business intelligence and knowledge management.
Gartner analysts also warned of a massive vendor consolidation cycle that will remove over 50% of existing technology suppliers by the end of 2005. As a result, sellers will regain pricing power in several technology sectors.
"Real productivity gains will be achieved through the replacement or greatly diminished role of entire industries," Lill said. "For example, the combination of secure broadband wireless, very low-power consumption mobile electronics and new display technologies will have stunning consequences for the publishing, media and advertising industries, to name a few."