The global economic crisis will give technology heads a chance to shine within their company, if they use IT to improve business systems and their organisation's bottom line. IDC is forecasting 0.5% growth in IT spending globally, but said the regional picture is healthier. John Gantz, Chief Research Officer at analysts IDC, said: 'The economic crisis is a technology change agent.' This means the CIO's job will get more complex, because technology change is part of what will come from the economic turmoil. Server sales are expected to suffer most during 2009, while there will be increased interest in virtualisation and cloud computing.