So much for the traditional August summer slowdown. Crashing stock prices, soaring debts, rising unemployment, sovereign downgrades and now shocking civil unrest have been piled on top of already-fragile national economies and the ongoing instabilities and conflicts across the Middle East. Suddenly, the competition between the dollar and euro boils down to which is the less risky, as fears of a double-dip recession intensify. That emerging powers such as China, India and Brazil have been largely untouched by all the turmoil suggests an important global leadership shift.

But in the world of IT, things have rarely been better. The combination of mobile, social and cloud computing is revitalizing the IT sector, generating a whole new wave of success and enthusiasm, even a mini dot.com bubble. Symbolically, Apple recently (if only briefly) passed Exxon to become the world's most valuable company, an extraordinary change for a firm written off for dead by many just a decade ago. Perhaps most importantly, IT unemployment in the US is less than 4 percent, increasingly resulting in talent wars and rising salaries. The nerds have triumphed, again.

When IT was a capital-intensive business, IT investments tended to move in sync with the wider economy. But in today's consumerized, increasingly variable-cost economy, it seems that IT can rise even as the overall economy staggers. This best of times/worst of times situation (in which business/IT misalignment is something to be thankful for) leads to the following observations:

• Large US and European firms are niche markets in the global consumer IT space.
• Unlike houses, cars and education, consumers don't take loans to acquire IT, further separating our industry from what is less a traditional recession than a debt crisis.
• Over the last decade, many students chose not to study computer science at least partly because they kept hearing that IT jobs would inevitably be outsourced. These fears have proven greatly over-blown, and these students and their nations were done a disservice.
• In contrast, workforce skills are perhaps the main reason why Germany has remained relatively strong. This is sending a powerful message, particularly to the US and UK.
• The status of Enterprise IT within the firm tends to rise or fall with the success of the overall IT sector. This suggests increasing CIO influence going forward.

Of course, one can't push this last argument too far. A serious double-dip recession would have significant impact on the missions and budgets of Enterprise IT even if the overall IT sector continues to flourish. A few months ago, many companies were preparing to move beyond the constraints of the downturn and prepare for a new wave of global innovation and growth. This shift to the future is now at risk.

The timing of our upcoming executive forum in London on September 8 will allow us to get a direct, real-time sense of how much things have changed, especially in Europe. We will report back on what our clients are thinking and doing in next month's commentary. By then, this summer, and particularly this August, will thankfully be behind us.