The future of IT services

LONDON, UK: Reportbuyer.com just published a new market research report: The Future of IT Services.

The arrival of the technology "3rd Platform" will change the nature of IT services forever, disrupting the current supplier ecosystem and creating new service lines, but also simultaneously cannibalizing and ultimately reducing old ones to irrelevance.

As end-user spend switches to these new technologies and away from the inward-focused back-end technologies (e.g., servers and network) toward external-facing front-end technologies (e.g., CRM and customer-focused analytics), technology buyers, the role of the CIO, and the type of services that vendors provide will all change.

This study suggests a new post-cloud services value chain, lists the success factors for vendors in the new landscape, and examines which supplier characteristics will determine success or failure.

"We're seeing an evolution from IT services to business services. IT services won't go away -- they will still be critical. But they will be the means to the end," said Douglas Hayward, associate vice president, IDC European Services in London, the UK. "The future is about addressing and solving business challenges using technology and IT services. To do that, the vendors will have to evolve radically."