The party's over

IT services market can wave goodbye to the high-growth years, says TechMarketView

The UK software and IT services (SITS) space can wave goodbye to the years of double-digit market growth, according to TechMarketView.

The analyst published its annual rankings of the UK market's leading players last week, which showed HP stretching its lead over IBM at the top. UK heavyweights Capita and BT Global Services consolidated their positions in third and fourth respectively.

US services bigwigs Accenture and CSC made the top 10, as did French giant Capgemini. Vendors Fujitsu, Microsoft and Oracle also made the cut.

Total 2010 revenue for the leading pack of 20 providers grew three per cent, largely as a result of consolidation activity. In real terms, the top SITS player suffered a three per cent sales drop, compared with 2009.

Georgina O'Toole, director at TechMarketView, told ChannelWeb she "does not ever expect a return to the high growth levels" the market enjoyed prior to the recession. She added that, in 2010, there was a disparity between how the top players performed in the public and private sector markets respectively.

"If you look at the top 10, seven of them showed declines in the public sector, whereas the opposite was true with their private sector revenue," she explained. "The private sector picked up enough to keep most of them on an even keel."

European and UK players were among 2010's biggest losers, with Liberata, Getronics and Siemens enduring revenue slumps of nine, 16 and 20 per cent respectively. Meanwhile, the Indian outsourcing giants continued their meteoric rise.

TCS enjoyed the highest growth among the top 20 SITS players, with revenue rising 27 per cent organically. Fellow Indians Wipro and Infosys were the second- and third-quickest growers.

The emergence of cloud will be one of the biggest trends to affect the SITS market over the next couple of years, said O'Toole. The big hardware vendors – such as HP and Fujitsu – may see traditional infrastructure services revenue streams dry up, while mid-sized players may find new openings, she added.

"The trend, especially as we move towards a cloud world, is towards breaking down infrastructure contracts into smaller pieces," said O'Toole. "That is going to give the mid-sized players the chance to develop more niche offerings, especially in areas such as security."