Years of growth in the IT sector came to a dead halt last year, resulting in the industry contracting, for the first time ever. So said Gartner global head of research Peter Sondergaard, speaking at the Gartner Symposium 2010 held in Cape Town last month.

“We didn’t just go through a slowdown as we did in the past, we actually had a decline of about 6.9  percent. [2009] ended up being the IT industry’s worst year,” he says.