European Spending on Digital Transformation Will Reach $256 Billion in 2019

European spending on technologies and services that enable the digital transformation of business practices, products, and organizations is forecast to reach $378.2 billion in 2022, according to IDC. DX spending is expected to steadily expand throughout the 2017-2022 forecast period, achieving a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.1%.

Europe is the third largest geography for DX spending, after the United States and China. Four industries will be responsible for nearly 44% of the $256 billion in European DX spending in 2019: discrete manufacturing ($39 billion), process manufacturing ($25 billion), retail ($26 billion), and utilities ($23 billion). For European manufacturers, the top DX spending priority is smart manufacturing. IDC expects the industry to invest more than $27.6 billion in smart manufacturing next year along with significant investments in digital innovation ($8.8 billion) and digital supply chain optimization ($5.5 billion).

In the retail space, the leading strategic priority is omni-channel commerce, which translates to nearly $5.0 billion in spending for related platforms and order orchestration and fulfillment. Meanwhile, the top priority for the utility industry is digital grid, which will drive investments of more than $13.6 billion in intelligent and predictive grid management and digital grid simulation. IDC predicts the largest investments in DX use cases across all industries in 2019 will be freight management ($11 billion), autonomic operations ($7 billion), robotic manufacturing ($8 billion), and intelligent and predictive grid management ($12 billion).

From a technology perspective, hardware and services will account for more than 78% of all DX spending in 2019. Services spending will be led by IT services ($43 billion) and connectivity services ($25 billion), while business services will post the highest growth (19.8% CAGR) over the five-year forecast period. Hardware spending will be spread across several categories, including enterprise hardware, personal devices, and IaaS infrastructure. DX-related software spending will total $55 billion in 2019 and will be the fastest-growing technology category with a CAGR of 18.1%.