Managers Will Increasingly Fund IT Spending Across European Industries

In Europe we are witnessing a shift in technology spending from IT to the line of business (LOB). IDC forecasts that European technology spending by LOB decision makers will steadily grow and will increase faster than spending funded by IT organizations through 2022.

European companies are forecast to spend $399 billion on IT (hardware, software, and services) in 2019. More than half of that spending (58.9%) will come from the IT budget, while the remainder (41.1%) will come from the budgets of technology buyers outside of IT. Nonetheless, LOB technology spending will grow at a faster rate than IT spending in the years ahead.

The CAGR for LOB spending over the 2017-2022 forecast period is forecast to be 5.9%, compared with a 2.9% CAGR for IT spending. In 2019, banking, discrete manufacturing, and process manufacturing will have the largest spend coming from LOBs. Retail, professional services, and discrete manufacturing will have the fastest LOB spending growth over 2018.

"In Europe, business managers are raising their voice in the IT decision-making process," said Andrea Minonne, senior research analyst at IDC Customer Insights & Analysis. "This trend is revolutionizing and disrupting how companies make technology investments, with LOBs more often claiming control over IT budgets. The consumerization of applications, especially those to access content and improve collaboration, together with the more mainstream use of cloud solutions, the uptake of software as a service, and the BYOD area, are driving LOBs to make technology investments independently. This results in a greater tendency to skip IT department approval, which can sometimes take a long time and delay workloads.