This month's installment of Cutter Benchmark Review is the fourth in our yearly series on IT budgets and the budgeting process. The budgeting process is of critical importance to the IT and business professionals in our readership. That last statement may have never ringed as true as it does today in the midst of the greatest economic upheaval we have witnessed, perhaps in our lifetime. As you get ready to read and evaluate the results of the survey to make sense of what we've uncovered, you need to bear in mind that the data gathered in this survey was collected during the worst economic climate in the modern computer era. Contextual and environmental events of this magnitude have an impact that is felt throughout a benchmarking survey of this kind, beginning with a very low response rate as the belt tightens and IT professionals around the world find themselves working harder, and on more responsibilities, than ever before.