American dominance in the Italian Pa. The cloud challenge
In 2024 out of 14 Consip lots 12 associated with US IT products
3' min read
3' min read
With the Multibrand tender in 2024, Consip calculated a maximum outlay of EUR 539 million for the procurement of software licences for 12-36 months for the public administration. Values were also high in 2023, when the maximum budgeted outlay amounted to EUR 435 million. On the other hand, it is difficult to quantify the turnover in the private sector for the protagonists of this business: the large US tech companies that now dominate the Italian market with computer programmes and digital infrastructures. In particular, Ibm, Oracle, Cisco, Adobe, Dell, VMware by Broadcom, to name the most influential ones in terms of turnover and international control of the It sector, to which must be added a constellation of smaller and sectorial companies.
Consider that of the 14 lots in last year's Consip tender, as many as 12 were associated with IT products from these and other US companies, with supplies required by ministries and local authorities, such as regions and local health authorities.
Things are no different in the rest of the EU. According to the business and financial magazine Fortune, Europe is the largest accessible market outside the United States, accounting for 27-30% of global software spending and a GDP of over 20 trillion dollars. An even more significant indicator of Europe's importance is its contribution to global revenues. To which must be added the large cloud business.
According to EU Commission statistics, almost half of European enterprises and public administrations rely on cloud services, a market led by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Salesforce and Ibm, all based in the United States. In Italy, the same National Strategic Pole (Psn) - controlled by Tim, Leonardo, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (through Cdp Equity) and Sogei - uses Google Assured Workload and Oracle Alloy applications.
The strength of American companies lies in the number of data centres (buildings that house the servers on which cloud data travels and is stored). According to an 8 April report by Barclays - citing data from the Cloudscene platform - about 50 per cent of data centres globally are located in the US, "as a result, a large proportion of European data is stored in the US and/or hosted by US companies" even outside US borders.
