EMEA Enterprise IT Spending Decelerates

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Gartner reports EMEA enterprise IT spending will decline by -1.4% Y-o-Y in 2011, reaching a total of €604M. The cause for the slowdown in the region? W. Europe slowing down EMEA growth through 2015.

Sending Graph“The second recession is about to hit and CIOs must decide which way to turn,” Gartner warns, as economic uncertainty and the eurozone crisis loom over the 2012 IT budget landscape. 

W. Europe still accounts for 80% of EMEA enterprise IT spending-- and will see 2011 spending decline by -1.8%, before growing by only 1.5% in 2012 according to Gartner. Otherwise the analyst says total Euro-based 2012 spending will grow by 2.3% Y-o-Y. 

Government (including education) IT spending accounts for around 20% of 2011 W. European enterprise IT spending, declining by -4.8% in 2011 and -1.7% in 2012. It will also fail to recover to 2010 levels until 2015.

What are CIOs to do? Gartner suggests the adoption of a post-modern approach to business ("centered on the customer and fuelled by the explosion in information, collaboration, and mobility enabled by the cloud"), the pursuit of simplicity (stripping down complexity through context-aware solutions) and "creative destruction" (eliminating older low-impact systems in favour of new solutions). 

The cloud is one growing trend, even in current days-- Gartner estimates 2011 public cloud service spending will reach €16 billion (3% of total EMEA enterprise IT spending), before growing to €20BN in 2012.

The analyst insists IT leaders must take calculated risks in order to surprise both their business and the competition-- don't retrench, manage risks, in other words.

Go Gartner Says EMEA Enterprise IT Spending in Euros Will Decline 1.4 Percent in 2011