Executives at Choice Hotels International Inc. realized years ago that they needed upgrade the company’s information technology systems — especially a global reservations system that, like many companies’ mission-critical systems, predated the internet. Ultimately, the owner of Quality Inn, Cambria Hotels and other chains settled on moving to Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud — a shift of more than 1,000 applications that will continue for several more years and include many more technologies.

What’s more, Brian Kirkland, Choice’s chief technology officer, thinks the company’s many rivals that haven’t already followed suit will be forced to do so in coming years. “We’re at the beginning of a long journey,” he said. “But the reality is they don’t have a choice.”

Continued spending on new technologies by Choice and every other company revamping its IT systems points to why many technology companies — at least those tapping into must-have enterprise technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence — could keep rolling in 2019. That bodes reasonably well for an earnings season that kicks off in earnest this coming week with fourth-quarter results from many of tech’s bellwethers.

So do recent surveys on information technology spending. Morgan Stanley’s recent survey of chief information officers indicated stable IT budgets set to grow about 4.7 percent this year, with “digitalization initiatives” a key driver of spending on software and cloud services.

Spending on enterprise technology is a particular bright spot, the firm said in another report. “The data era is gaining momentum, driving the first period of secular growth in enterprise IT spending since the early 2000s,” analyst Katy Huberty wrote in a note to clients. “We believe the market is in the early innings of a technology-driven, decade-long investment cycle centered on data-focused technologies like artificial intelligence, automation, ‘internet of things’ and augmented reality.”

For all that, though, many factors will make the next few weeks rocky for many companies. There’s Apple’s shocking, market-tanking slowdown in iPhone sales early this month. A choppy stock market. Ongoing trade tensions with China. The seemingly endless partial government shutdown, which may already be knocking down economic growth.

That’s why some companies could show less-than-stellar results. Even more likely, their outlooks for coming quarters could be more muted or negative than investors hope as macroeconomic and political headwinds bear down.

A couple of early mixed signals came this past week. On Thursday, Asian chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. reported fourth-quarter results, in particular profits, that beat expectations. Over on the cloud software-as-a-service front, Atlassian Corp. plc initially delighted investors on better-than-expected results Thursday. But by Friday’s end, its stock had fallen more than 2 percent, for reasons not entirely clear, on a big up day for the overall market.

Kicking off the big tech guns’ reports of their final calendar quarter of 2018 is IBM Corp. on Tuesday, Jan. 22. It’s anyone’s guess how IBM might fare, since the previous quarter reported in late October broke a string of quarters showing modest revenue growth. On a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared more than 500 points, IBM shares fell more than 4 percent on fiscal second-quarter earnings that missed in just about every category. But the bigger concern may be how the blockbuster acquisition of Red Hat Software Inc. is progressing.

Two days later, Intel Corp. will weigh in. Following a blowout third quarter, investors’ expectations may be high — perhaps all the more so because its long-awaited appointment of a new chief executive may come the same day. Also on Jan. 24, storage giant Western Digital will report its results, providing an indication of demand for the devices needed for all those big-data and digital transformation projects.

The following week will be even busier, with SAP SE slated to report results early Jan. 29, followed later the same day by Apple Inc. — which should provide an especially interesting signal given its recent iPhone issues — and rising veteran chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

The next day is a blockbuster, with results from a raft of big tech companies: Microsoft Corp. — whose cloud computing revenues will be watched closely — as well as Facebook Inc., mobile chipmaker Qualcomm Inc., workflow automation phenom ServiceNow Inc. and China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., another data point for cloud computing.

But the biggest cloud provider, Amazon.com Inc., will provide the best bead on the market the day after the big pack, on Jan. 30. Samsung will provide a final look at the broad tech picture with complete results on Jan. 31. Finally, Google LLC brings up the rear on Feb. 4. Although its cloud computing revenue is just a fraction of its ad-based business, how it fares in that key area will have an outsized impact on the company’s shares and perhaps tech stocks at large.

Some of the other big tech firms, such as Hewlett Packard Co. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Salesforce.com Inc., Nvidia Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. report their results later in February.

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