Beancounters at Gartner have added up some numbers and divided by their collective shoe size and worked out that IT spending in Europe is projected to total $1.1 trillion in 2024, an increase of 9.3 per cent.
But the report said that, despite all the hype, AI is not something that companies are making a priority — yet.
Within the five key areas of managed services – datacentre, application, customer product, network, workspace, service desk, Europe is expected to bring in $69.5 billion in 2024, growing 6.9 per cent.
Gartner distinguished VP analyst John-David Lovelock said that GenAI hasn’t had the chance to get off the ground yet.
“The new generative AI hasn’t really had the opportunity yet to earn money from enterprise,” he said.
“2023 really was the year of the story. Organisations had the time to come up with the story of how generative AI is going to affect their product, industry, go-to-market, valuation, interaction with customers, wherever they felt they were getting the most bang for their storyline.
He said that next year firms will start to be planning their AI projects which will start to launch in 2025.
Gartner predicts software and IT services to be the two segments where CIOs in Europe are expected to increase their spending the most in 2024.
Some of the growth in IT services is due to talent shortages in IT departments in Europe.
“There is a migration of IT skills away from the enterprise IT department toward technology and service providers (TSPs). CIOs do not have the employees nor the talents to do all the work required and turn to IT services firms to fill in the gaps,” Lovelock said.
Gartner says inflation continues to impact consumer purchasing power, and while businesses and consumers are expected to increase their spending on devices in 2024, the level of IT spending on devices is not estimated to go back to 2021 levels until 2027.
In Europe, Austria, Ireland and Finland are projected to record the biggest bounce back in consumer spending in 2024.
