This IDC study presents the results of a recent IDC survey of 700 European organizations' IT decision makers and line-of-business IT influencers from small, midsize, and large European organizations. The respondents were questioned on their IT priorities, spending plans, and software procurement processes. Additionally, the survey inquired into their plans and attitudes regarding a number of software issues including cloud computing, mobile devices, Big Data, customer experience management, and social software in the enterprise. This study specifically looks at changes in storage software spending in 2012, examined by country, industry, and organization size.

"Times have changed — again. The healthy outlook in storage software spending indications that we found in early 2011 has been replaced with a much bleaker outlook in this year's survey. There were no major differences by country, industry, and company size, except that Spain, the manufacturing sector, and the midmarket are slightly more negative than the overall market expectation," said Carla Arend, research director, IDC European Information Management and Storage.