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The Infoconomy Index has reached a historic milestone: European growth is exceeding that of the US-dominated Global Index for the first time in the five years since monitoring started. In May, European-headquartered companies grew 9.8% compared to the year-ago period, a pace not seen since February 2002. The Global Index posted 9.7% growth, a slight pick-up on the last two months, which could mean Europe's glory as the regional tech leader will be short-lived.

The recent batch of European financial results that have fuelled that performance come from some of the region's strongest companies. French business intelligence software vendor Business Objects and the UK's financial software leader Sage both showed growth of 15%. IT services group, Capgemini, topped most of its rivals with a 16% rise in quarterly revenues, while somewhat smaller consultancy, Detica, posted a 23% jump. Other strong growth was evident at UK-based mobile operating system specialist Symbian (92%), France's engineering software company Dassault (13%) and German business process consultancy IDS Sheer (17%).

But there were equally strong results from the other side of the Atlantic. Networking leader Cisco continued a good run with 10% growth, while Dell's sales were up 16%. The security boom helped Symantec post a 28% rise, while Veritas, the storage software vendor it is about to acquire, reported a growth of 15%.

Pulling the Global Index down slightly this month by their sheer size and maturity were tech giants HP and Microsoft, both of which showed below par growth of 7% and 5% respectively.

The Infoconomy 200 Index measures the overall growth rate of the IT industry by tracking the financial results of the world's most important publicly listed IT companies.

	Infoconomy index of IT sector growth