According to a recent survey conducted by Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley, 225 technology executives polled said that their IT budgets would increase by 5%, on the average, in 2003. But the market is still skittish, and that spending may, in fact, be in the 2-3% range for next year. However, even this modest increase spells good news for the battered technology sector. Nearly half of the executives polled expressed optimism in the direction of the economy and the economic outlook for 2003, and nearly half of those polled also reported that they would be spending more on IT projects in 2003 than was spent in 2002. The products that the budgets will be spent as follows: for software, security software ranks first; for hardware purchases, hardware storage is first, with new desktop computer equipment, and acquisition of large servers following.