With IT spending in Europe showing sluggish growth, IDC has identified the leading inhibitor as a growing culture of "good-enough computing," in which business leaders believe they can run their operations without continually upgrading their IT installations.

At the same time, IDC downgraded its previous prediction for IT spending growth for 2005 from 5.6 percent to 4 percent. The market research firm noted that European IT spending is still improving over last year, even though it will lag other major economies including the U.S.

"Business managers in Europe are exerting considerable influence over the IT buying process, and with an eye on retaining as much existing infrastructure as possible," said Stephen Minton, IDC's vice president of Worldwide IT Markets, in a statement.

The IDC European IT Market Watch Survey found that 60 percent of large firms and more than 50 percent of SBMs cited the "good enough computing" factor as the key reason for delaying new investments. Nearly 40 percent of the large firms complained they couldn't get enough skilled staff. The survey found also that large organizations deem security issues to be important for their IT buying while there was less concern among SMBs of security issues.