Digital market growing +3.6% a year: invest in an MES now

The gap between digital and GDP

According to the Anitec-Assinform study "Il Digitale in Italia 2026", the Italian digital market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of +3.6% over the 2025-2029 period, rising from €84.4 billion to nearly €97.7 billion. Over the same period, Italian GDP will remain flat at between 0.5% and 0.8%: a gap of 5 to 8 times that shows how quickly digital is reshaping the competitiveness of Italian manufacturing companies, regardless of how the broader economy performs.

Why the MES makes the difference

The Anitec-Assinform study shows that the real bottleneck for manufacturing companies is not the technology available, but the quality of integration between management systems and production. The MES (Manufacturing Execution System) tracks cycle times, machine downtime, scrap, energy consumption and batch traceability in real time, turning the factory from a black box into a source of structured, usable data. Without this data, even the autonomous AI Agents expected to be the protagonists of the 2026-2029 period have nothing concrete to work on: an artificial intelligence can only optimise what it is first able to measure accurately.

Incentives: a window not to be missed

Unlike much of Europe, in Italy public incentives remain the strongest lever for industrial digitalisation. The Transizione 5.0 Plan explicitly includes MES, SCADA, PLM and EMS systems among the eligible investments, with a tax credit covering 5% to 45% of the expenditure. With the main PNRR calls coming to an end, the market will have to learn to stand on its own two feet: those who start an MES project today can still count on public co-funding, before this window narrows. Postponing means investing tomorrow on less favourable terms, with a wider technology gap to close.

Conclusion

The digital market does not wait for those who are still undecided: with growth 5 to 8 times higher than national GDP, according to the Anitec-Assinform study, postponing digitalisation means falling behind competitors. The MES is today the minimum infrastructure on which to build automation, artificial intelligence applied on the factory floor and genuine optimisation of production costs, with the added advantage of public incentives still available for those who decide to start right away.

The time to go digital is now. Discover the incentives available right away:https://www.qualitas.it/industria-4.0-5.0-incentivi?_gl=1*4g9kox*_up*MQ..*_ga*NDc3NTUwMDcwLjE3OTAxNTE0OTE.*_ga_GLPGZPYPMY*czE3OTAxNTE0OTEkbzEkZzEkdDE3OTAxNTE0OTMkajU4JGwwJGgw