After months of wild fluctuation, the rate of revenue growth in the IT industry appears to have stabilised. The Infoconomy Index, which tracks the world’s 200 largest technology companies, gained 0.5 percentage points to reach 11.6% in October 2007 – roughly where it stood two months ago.

Meanwhile, growth among European members of the industry continued its gradual acceleration. Climbing 0.3 percentage points to reach 8.5%, the European Index, which monitors a subset of 50 companies from the region, is climbing back to the kind of pace seen before its steep decline began a year ago.

Good financial performances from IT’s big brands helped to keep the global index buoyant this month. Software giant Microsoft reported an impressive revenue growth of 27% (see Financial Report), the chip-makers Intel and AMD both had good quarters, posting revenue growth of 15% and 23%, respectively. All three of these companies had an upturn in PC shipments to thank for much of this growth.

Information management vendor EMC also fared well, pushing its revenues up 17%, while consultancy Accenture posted 15% growth. 

The upward pressure on the index from those companies was tempered by a sub-par 7% revenue growth at IBM, the world’s second largest IT company by revenues. However, there were no significant losses among any of the industry’s sizeable players.

The European Index had German applications vendor SAP to thank for its upward trend. The continent’s largest software company delivered revenue growth of 10% – behind the global average but ahead of the pack in Europe.

The Infoconomy 200 Index measures the overall growth rate of the IT industry by tracking the financial results of the world’s most important publicly listed IT companies.