"How's business?" Let that be the question of the year -- or perhaps of the recession. Ask it aloud and you're sure to be greeted with an "ehh," an "ugh," and maybe even a guttural growl or two.

The fact is, the business landscape has changed due to financial constraints. Anyone who says the economy isn't weighing hard upon them is lying. What Americans have been feeling for the past year was finally confirmed in December, when the government officially announced we were in a recession -- that we'd been in one since December 2007, in fact, and it might not lighten up anytime soon.

In talking to analysts, vendors, and corporate decision-makers, a distinguishable, repeatable strategy emerged: You can't afford to do nothing. The idea was echoed throughout conversations -- now is not the time for CIOs to sit upon their hands. It's time to act -- to be proactive, in fact -- and to make changes that will ensure your business will still be around come 2010.

For many business leaders, the economic downturn has rung a few bells. Dot-com bubble and Y2K, anyone? In a recent report on technology in a recession, AMR Research President and CEO Tony Friscia wrote that the recessionary blip in the 1990s paved the way for a less-than-rocky path in the current day. He writes, "Recovering from the bad dot-com/Y2K hangover changed how companies approached [technology] spending and management. The biggest result has been that [technology] is now a core part of the business strategies of the best-run companies, which means technology spending won't be hit nearly as hard as it was in 2001." Still, organizations are tightening budgets and reallocating spending.

Even before the official word came down, public relations firms began throwing around the "recession" buzzword-even though optimists hoped it might only be a...