Blaming the meltdown in the Eurozone, Gartner has sharply lowered its outlook for global IT industry growth from the first quarter of this year — when it forecast worldwide IT spending would grow 5.3% — to 3.9%.

As a result, worldwide IT spending is forecast to hit a lower $3.5tn this year from 2009’s $3.3tn, with the firm warning markets that the European sovereign debt crisis is having an impact on the outlook for IT spending.

Why? It’s a dollar-euro imbalance, basically. As the greenback has strengthened against the euro during the April-May-June timeframe, a trend likely to continue over the summer, that will lead to downward pressure on IT spending accounted for in dollars.

Want more gloom? "Longer-term, public-sector spending will be curtailed in Europe as governments struggle to bring budget deficits under control during the next five years and to reduce debt during the next 10 years… Private-sector economic activity will also likely be hindered because of the direct impact of austerity measures on key government suppliers."

We’ve tracked with something of a wry eye these types of forecasts the past few weeks – some saying things are on the mend, some not. But there’s something in this analysis that feels right to us. We figure Gartner’s bean counters are broadly right when detailing that overall, we’re still in for a bumpy ride.

At the same time – there are bright spots. Worldwide, hardware spending will do well, set to hit $36bn in 2010 – a very healthy 9.1% up-tick. The analysts put this down to strong PC shipments, driven by consumer interest and by enterprises locking on to a new replacement cycle/migration to Windows 7.

Not true in software, which has been hit by the dollar-euro thing pretty badly, however.

It does have to be said that we will still see growth – even if more modest growth than we’d been told to look for. In 2009, by these figures, the global market shrank a cool 4.9%. So we are seeing recovery – just maybe not in one leap, as it were.

In Gartner-speak, it concludes that the economic outlook is stable but "vulnerable to shocks in key regions and industries, which means that IT spending decisions are still scrutinised for value".

The problem, though, is that used as we are to cost-cutting, we had all been positioning 2010 as a year for expansion. So – you will now be tasked with creating innovation in a period of austerity, keeping the lights on and doing funky new stuff with less (or a laughably small bit more, maybe) than the last FY.

Shall we all now booh the credit-crazed Southern Europeans for getting us in this mess? No, because as we know our country loves to extend the credit limit on the old national card, too. A better response: look for even more ways to pare core infrastructure costs down and down and down and use the margin gained to make a real difference to the business.

Let’s face it; they need your help.