The study found that although overall spending on IT is down, spending in someareas – including energy trading and risk management – has actuallyincreased.

The study says 44% of companies increased their spending on trading and riskmanagement systems in 2002, while 30% of companies spent the same as in 2001and 11% spent less. It links the increase to the need for applications that supportwholesale market restructuring in the US.

The area that most utilities focused on was security. The study