Service providers using more IT services vendors than ever

PUNE, INDIA: Amdocs, the leading provider of customer experience systems and services, released the results of a global survey into service provider IT services sourcing trends.

The survey found that despite service provider ambition to simplify and streamline their IT operational environments, three out of four service providers have increased the number of their IT services vendors over the past five years.

Key findings of the survey reveal that service providers:

* Are using more services vendors than before: 74 percent of respondents said that over the past five years they had increased the number of services vendors they used, with 26 percent having doubled their number of vendor agreements during this period.

* Are using more services to re-align their operations in support of technological developments: emerging IT domains (e.g. cloud computing and big data analytics), new organizational buying centers (e.g. centers within the CMO and CTO organizations), and growing skills gaps have been identified by 77, 74 and 72 percent of the respondents, respectively, as key factors driving the rise in services engagements.

* Agree that core IT domains saw the largest increase in services vendor engagements: IT infrastructure, BSS and OSS (business and operational support systems) were identified by 77, 64 and 54 percent of respondents respectively as the three IT domains seeing the highest increase in the number of external services vendors.

* Are looking for sourcing engagement models that can help them simplify IT operational structures: Minimizing business risk (79 percent) and deal complexity (72 percent) were defined as the top criteria for selecting sourcing engagement models by survey respondents.

"What the survey indicates, and what is further supported from our discussions with customers, is that there is a growing need for prime service integrators that service providers can rely on to take full accountability over the entire, multi-vendor structure in order to reduce risk and allow service providers to focus on their business, rather than deal with the increasing complexities of the IT environment," said Rebecca Prudhomme, VP of product and solutions marketing at Amdocs.