The total Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) IT Services spending in 2011 is expected to grow by 8.7% over 2010 riding on dual waves of outsourcing services (especially on the application side) and new IT projects specifically on “Cloud” and “Smart Infrastructure”, finds Springboard Research, a leading innovator in the IT Market Research industry that has been just recently acquired by Forrester.

The Springboard Research report APeJ IT Services Report - 2010 analyses the prevalent trends in the IT Services market along with market sizing, forecasts, key service providers with rankings and key IT solutions trends. It also highlights the future “mega trends” that are expected to shape the IT Services market in 2011. The report further found that the market is estimated to reach $52.9 billion by 2011, with China, Australia and India contributing 72% to the total spending and shows that 64% of the IT services spending come from discrete services, majorly infrastructure support and integration related services and the remaining 36% from outsourcing services.

“The high skew towards discrete services in the region clearly highlights the fact that the IT services market in APeJ is still in the maturing phase as opposed to some of the more mature economies of the West and Europe where outsourcing services can constitute close to 50% of the total IT Services spend”, noted Seepij Gupta, Associate Research Manager - IT Services at Springboard Research.

For more mature IT markets such as Singapore and Australia, growth is primarily led by investments into new technologies such as Cloud services and Smart Infrastructure. Some developing countries like India and China are also leapfrogging and adopting these new technologies and business models while driving the markets’ volume, thanks to a fast adoption of more traditional services such as managed services (India) and IT outsourcing (China). These cumulatively drive the growth of IT Services in the region.

Going forward, Springboard Research expects the IT services market in APeJ to continue its rapid development and maturation process, which will be driven by:

  1. Shortage of resources and skills: Recruiting, training and retaining qualified IT personnel is becoming a major challenge for end user organizations and they are increasingly opting to outsource the management of their IT assets (both infrastructure and applications) to one or several third party service providers.
  2. Complex IT environments: As the IT sprawl of organizations continue to grow and become more complex with new technologies being adopted, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the organizations to manage their IT effectively and efficiently. This situation calls for access to best-of-breed functionalities and services which a service provider can provide. Springboard Research expects IT consulting services in particular to benefit from this trend.
  3. Innovations in the Managed Services space: Springboard Research believes that 2011 will see an expansion of managed services beyond basic infrastructure management to include more application‐related services. As more organizations seek to reap the benefits of a better integrated approach to managed services, there will be a clear move towards application outsourcing that combines infrastructure and application management to yield better application performance at a lower cost. As this trend continues to gain strength, the lines between SaaS and managed services will increasingly blur.

Proliferation of “Everything-as-a-Service”

As cloud computing continues to gain market prominence, everything is increasingly being packaged/productized as a service to replace CAPEX outlays in favour of more variable OPEX spending. Perhaps too easily dismissed as a cheap marketing ploy, this dynamic is really a reflection of client demands for far greater flexibility, predictability and time‐to‐market when investing in information technology.

These new delivery models and methodologies enable service providers to help their clients be smarter about the way they consume IT, and for instance to link the maintenance costs of their IT systems to the value generated by the processes and supported by these systems. “These emerging trends will not only benefit the clients, as they pay only for what they consume, but will also help the IT services market to mature to a whole new level”, noted Fred Giron, VP - IT Services, Springboard Research. “Springboard Research strongly believe that this shift to new services will transform the way IT is delivered and consumed and moving forward, “as-a-service” will be an integral element for almost everything IT consumed by organizations”, Mr. Giron added.

Source: Springboard Research