Cloud is driving IT spending through the roof across Europe
Despite testing economic circumstances, IT spending across Europe is apparently “recession-proof”.
Gartner has predicted US$1.1 trillion will be spent on IT in 2024, a 9.3% increase on this year’s projected total of US$1tn.
The rise is expected to be fuelled by investment in cloud computing, cloud security and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), resulting in a significant increase in overall expenditure on IT services across Europe.
Spending on IaaS, for example, is anticipated to surge by 27% in 2024.
“Cloud services are rapidly increasing in popularity, offering numerous benefits such as flexibility, agility, cost optimisation and enhanced innovation,” comments Josh Boer, VP and Global Head of Sales at the tech consultancy, VeUP.
“It’s expected that demand for cloud will continue to grow in the coming years and, for businesses that wish to keep up with digital transformations happening across the marketplace, tapping into the benefits that cloud environments bring is a must.”
Priorities shift amid economic uncertainty
Clearly, the big focus for companies across various industries over the past 12 months has been harnessing the power of artificial intelligence.
It goes without saying, therefore, that the CIO’s focus has also been dominated by AI, which is contributing to the uptick in cloud spending given the related security risks. Budgets must take into account safeguarding measures, in addition to integration.
Gartner points out that this underlines shifting priorities during a period of economic uncertainty as businesses prepare themselves for the future, while increasing their spending on areas such as security and risk management – projected to increase by 16% to US$56 billion in 2024.
In a separate forecast, the consulting giant predicts end-user spending on public cloud services will reach $678.8bn.
“Despite a conflated economic situation, IT spending in Europe continues to be recession-proof,” adds John-David Lovelock, Chief Forecaster at Gartner.
“CIOs in Europe who pursued the 'growth-at-all-costs' strategy for more than a decade are now shifting the emphasis of ongoing IT projects towards cost control, efficiencies and automation, while curtailing IT initiatives with longer ROIs.
“AI has also added a new level of concern around security and ensuring their systems are wrapped before hackers get near sensitive data.”
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