Tech CEOs: Here's Where the Growth Lies

Nonetheless, LSI CEO Abhi Talwalkar reflected Seagate's comments. "There's definitely a cautious orientation out there," he said. "We're still growing in all the areas where we expected growth, but less than we expected three months ago -- wireless infrastructure capital equipment spending is still a bit slow."

F5 Networks(FFIV) met analysts' estimates in its third-quarter results in July, although CEO John McAdam identified a cautious spending climate.

"It was nothing as bad as early 2009, but there's definitely some signs of caution," added the CEO.

To illustrate his point, McAdam noted that F5's hiring remains robust. "This last quarter, we hired just under 100 people," he said. "This quarter, we're hoping to exceed that, probably hiring about 125 people."

With economic issues weighing on Silicon Valley, the Nasdaq has gained just 0.1% during the past month, lagging the S&P 500's modest gain of 1.5%. The Nasdaq has risen more than 12% this year, outpacing the S&P 500's 9.9% gain.

Not all tech companies are feeling the spending burn, as evidenced by strong second-quarter numbers from EMC(EMC) . The results marked the company's 10th consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year revenue and profit growth.

EMC storage rival CommVault(CVLT) also posted robust results earlier this week, growing its revenue by 22%.

"The quarter was pretty well-balanced -- it started well and it ended well," CommVault CEO Bob Hammer said in an interview. "The momentum is continuing into this current quarter."

Still, CommVault is taking nothing for granted. "The assumption is that IT spending will come under pressure and we're attempting to mitigate that by making sure that our sales opportunity funnel increases at a faster pace," said Hammer. That could involve, for example, focusing sales people on very specific segments of the market and certain CommVault products.

In addition to storage, security and cloud are also hot technologies.

Security specialist Sourcefire(FIRE) , which is one of TheStreet's Breakout Stocks, beat analysts' second-quarter estimates on Tuesday.