According to the latest forecast from Gartner, the technological research and consulting firm, IT spending in Europe is projected to total $1.1 trillion (£900b~) in 2024. This figure marks a 9.3% increase from 2023.

In terms of where European CIOs are expected to increase spending next year, software and IT services represent the largest two areas. Software spending is being forecasted to grow by 14.5% next year to around $241b (£197b~), with IT services spending to increase by 11.8% to $427b (£349b~).

Gartner cited some of the growth in IT services spending as an outcome of talent shortages in European IT departments. “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,” noted John-David Lovelock, VP analyst at Gartner.

The segments of software and IT services are followed by data centre systems with a projected 8% growth in spending to $49b (£40b~), devices with 4.6% growth to $131b (£107b)~, and communications services with 4.4% growth to $297b (£243b~).

Gartner also noted that, while there is sufficient spending within data centre markets to maintain the existing on-premises data centres, new spending continues to skew toward cloud options, which is expected to grow 27% in Europe in 2024.

Further, although artificial intelligence (AI) is a priority for CIOs both this year and next, it’s not yet a spending priority.

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In terms of geographic breakdown, the top three most mature countries in Europe are set to represent 51% of total IT spending in Europe in 2024. IT spending in the UK, Germany, and France is projected to total $588 billion (£456b~) in 2024, up 9.8% from 2023.

However, among the international monetary fund (IMF) developing countries (Hungary and Poland), IT spending is estimated to total $32.3b (£26b~) in 2024, up 9.2% from 2023.

“Despite a conflated economic situation, IT spending in Europe continues to be recession-proof,” commented Lovelock.

“CIOs in Europe who pursued the “growth at all costs” strategy for over a decade, are now shifting the emphasis of ongoing IT projects toward cost control, efficiencies and automation, while curtailing IT initiatives with longer ROIs.”

Last month, Gartner also forecasted that worldwide IT spending will total $5.1 trillion (£4.1t~) in 2024, an increase of 8% from 2023.