>For example - a telecom billing firm might spend 30% of its total revenue per year on IT.
Hehe, while I don't have the exact figures, I am quite sure the IT budget for our Local Cisco Academy is at least that much. We decided to have 1 computer per student, and need other specialized equipment (routers and switches) for the students to practice.
>A glass bottle manufacturing firm might spen 0.5 to 2.0 percent.
Which reminds me that at a manufacturing company where I was working, they must have spent tens of thousands of dollars - more likely, hundreds of thousands - every year in the manufacturing equipment. But when I asked for some needed software (a few hundres of dollars) to complement Visual FoxPro, I didn't ever get it approved. After a while, I no longer asked, and looked for free alternatives. (For example, I used Perforce instead of VSS - free for 1-2 developers.)
Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire... (from Gulliver's Travels)