Breakthrough 1:
European tech confidence at an all-time high

More influential than ever

Over the past decade, the role of IT has evolved from a support function to a driver of business growth and strategic innovation.

More than four in five European technology leaders (84%) believe their influence is more significant than ever.

report that IT is seen as a strategic function by executive leadership and 85% feel empowered to make strategic decisions.

are optimistic about the future role of their IT department, and most are not feeling the pressure of the past to cut budgets.

In fact, 81% of IT leaders report that their IT budget has increased in the face of disruption.

More crucially, in view of the increased democratization of technology, and a plethora of tech-savvy business stakeholders to satisfy, Europe’s tech leaders are receiving recognition from across the business, with 83% feeling that IT is well-respected by other lines of business.

feel supported by their executive leadership team to pursue innovative IT initiatives.

Focused on the future

Economic uncertainty is driving a focus on costs.

of IT leaders report that economic disruption has increased their focus on IT cost optimization initiatives.

And against the ever-escalating threat landscape, prioritizing resources towards cybersecurity remains a common theme. 86% of respondents have increased their spending on improving their business resilience.

And we see IT leaders respond to disruption by future-proofing their organizations. They are re-thinking their ecosystems and their personal leadership approach. A keyword here is creativity; 84% of IT leaders believe IT as a function needs to transform to become a more creative force across the business and 83% believe they must reinvent themselves to reflect the changing demands of the business.

The report states 85% of IT leaders feel empowered to make strategic decisions. Do you feel as an IT leader your influence in shaping business strategy is…?

Significantly more impactful than 3 years ago
Moderately more impactful
About the same
Less impactful

Decentralizing experimentation

With an AI-enabled future in mind, 83% of respondents believe that it is essential to enable lines of business to experiment in a decentralized model, with 82% seeing their role as an enabler, providing guardrails while allowing for freedom of experimentation and discovery.

To empower lines of business while maintaining guardrails, which of these are your primary focus areas? (Select all that apply)

Cybersecurity & Data Protection Frameworks
Financial Governance & Cloud Cost Optimization (FinOps)
Interoperability & API-First Architecture Strategy
Regulatory Compliance & Geopolitical Risk Mitigation
Enterprise Data Governance & AI Ethics Policies
Centralized Platform & Tooling Adoption (e.g., common DevOps, low-code/no-code platforms)
Scalability, Performance & Resilience Engineering

IT is no longer viewed as a support function. We play a crucial role in shaping and executing business strategy.

Tom Tanghe, General Manager – IT Center EMEA, Daikin

The CIO is in a privileged position to have visibility across the business functions and lines of business, which puts us in a strong position to identify transformation opportunities. Then, the name of the game is business transformation – not just technology transformation.

Colin Shenoy, CTO, Diageo

If we could get rid of all the silos and bring together all the best talent into a single place, IT could act as a creative, unifying force to innovate solutions the whole business could benefit from.

Júnior Mendonça, Global Tech Lead, Digital Workplace & Employee Experience, ING

The focus is on building the ‘empowering guardrails’, and that means setting very clear standards around the security, compliance and the interoperability between systems, but doing it in a way that's really transparent and is also flexible.

Sharon Prior, CIO