2650 organisations participated in this year's IT trend survey, conducted by Business & IT Trends Institute and the Global Institute for IT Management, with the support of CIONET.

Overall, the research finds IT is becoming more strategic and business focused. It appears that organisations are becoming more digitised with their focus shifting away from tactical and organisational IT issues like efficiency, service delivery, and cost reduction to more strategic and organisational priorities like business agility, innovation, the velocity change in the organisation, IT time to market, and the value of IT to the business. Time will tell if this is a widespread trend, but it is here now among global and European organisations and it is confirmed by a corresponding shift in how CIOs are spending their time.

The report also clearly shows that IT as a function is disappearing any time soon. Instead, it shows that IT is set to enter a new Renaissance area with regard of its importance to organisations.

Some major findings for Europe in comparison to other regions:

• IT and Business Alignment is the number one concern throughout all regions. But when it comes to Security and Privacy, in comes on the 9th place of concerns in Europe, while it is on 2nd place globally;
• After 4 years of decline, the percentage of revenue that is invested in IT increased this year in Europe and is now at an average of 5,5%
• In Europe, only 2% of IT leaders report directly to the CEO, in comparison to 6% globally;
• Remarkably, Innovation capacity comes on the 4th place as a Key Performance Indicator in Europe, while it only appears on the 13th place globally.

Download the report here, or read it online: