New Zoho-commissioned study of 1,500 European IT leaders finds companies with strong digital foundations report measurable AI returns 14 times more often than digital laggards — and data sovereignty is now a boardroom concern.
Europe’s digital divide is widening even as overall progress inches forward, and nowhere is the gap more visible than in artificial intelligence returns, according to a new study commissioned by enterprise software vendor Zoho.
The “2026 Digital Maturity Study of European Companies,” conducted by Censuswide on behalf of Zoho, surveyed 1,500 digital transformation decision-makers across the UK, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands between January 9 and 22, 2026. It finds that 27 percent of European companies now have strong digital foundations, up from 25 percent a year earlier. At the same time, 34 percent still show significant deficits, a figure the study’s authors describe as concerning given the pace of AI adoption.
“The message is clear: companies with solid digital foundations achieve better results in AI, customer satisfaction, cost control and resilience,” said Sridhar Iyengar, Managing Director Europe at Zoho, in the report’s foreword. “Companies with digitalization deficits are increasingly losing competitiveness.”
Germany leads the five markets surveyed, with 37 percent of companies reporting high digital maturity, ahead of the UK at 35 percent, Spain at 25 percent and France at 24 percent. The Netherlands stands out for the opposite reason: the share of Dutch companies with solid digital foundations fell to just 14 percent, the steepest year-on-year decline among the markets studied, while 49 percent of Dutch companies now show low digital maturity, the highest share in the survey. The study’s authors suggest this may point to rising cost pressure and growing dependence on siloed cloud solutions.
Company size also correlates with maturity: 33 percent of large companies with 1,000 or more employees report high digital maturity, compared with 30 percent of mid-sized firms and 19 percent of small companies.
Where the gap becomes most consequential is in AI returns. Among companies with high digital maturity, 43 percent already report measurable returns on AI investment, compared with just 3 percent of companies with low digital maturity, according to the study. Companies with strong digital foundations are also 14 times more likely to classify AI as business-critical, and achieve more than double the positive ROI rate across nine AI use cases tested, from fraud detection to forecasting.
The findings extend into everyday operations. Ninety-seven percent of high-maturity companies rate their ability to improve customer experience as excellent, against just 5 percent of low-maturity companies, the study found. High-maturity firms also adopt cloud technologies without major problems four times more often than their less mature peers, 28 percent versus 7 percent.
Cloud usage itself is now nearly universal across Europe, with just 4 percent of companies running no cloud applications and more than half operating between one and five. But adoption alone does not equal maturity, the report cautions: companies with weaker digital foundations tend to rely on isolated platforms with limited integration, while more mature organizations pursue coordinated multi-cloud strategies. Ninety percent of European companies reported difficulties introducing new cloud tools in 2026, with a shortage of specialist skills, inconsistent applications and integration challenges cited as the top obstacles.
Rising platform costs compound the pressure. Half of the companies surveyed reported higher cloud and platform costs per employee than a year earlier, led by the Netherlands at 61 percent and Germany at 57 percent. In response, 30 percent report bringing services back in-house to reduce vendor dependency, and 28 percent are reviewing their vendor portfolios.
Vendor selection criteria have also shifted. While price remains the top factor at 29 percent, trust and reliability have climbed the rankings to 21 and 22 percent respectively, displacing integration capability and customer service, which dominated in prior years, the study notes. Data sovereignty has become part of that calculus: 86 percent of European companies now say it is an important or essential factor in choosing digital platforms, with 75 percent saying they do not want their data stored in another country.
Despite the challenges, sentiment remains broadly positive. Eighty-six percent of European IT leaders say they are optimistic about business development over the coming year. But AI disruption itself has emerged as the second-largest external worry, cited by 17 percent of respondents, behind only macroeconomic conditions such as inflation and interest rates. The study suggests this anxiety is concentrated among less digitally mature companies, while their more advanced peers tend to view AI as an opportunity rather than a threat.
A decade after most companies began formal digital transformation efforts, just 4 percent describe themselves as fully digitized, and 86 percent report having encountered significant obstacles along the way, most often the time and cost of implementation and a lack of employee buy-in. Zoho’s Iyengar noted the direction of travel is positive but insufficient. “The gap between leaders and laggards will become a decisive competitive factor over the next five years,” he said, according to the report.
Dr. Jakob Jung is Editor-in-Chief of Security Storage and Channel Germany. He has been working in IT journalism for more than 20 years. His career includes Computer Reseller News, Heise Resale, Informationweek, Techtarget (storage and data center) and ChannelBiz. He also freelances for numerous IT publications, including Computerwoche, Channelpartner, IT-Business, Storage-Insider and ZDnet. His main topics are channel, storage, security, data center, ERP and CRM.
Contact via Mail: jakob.jung@security-storage-und-channel-germany.de