Forrester: emergence of "clouds" threatens revenue of traditional integrators

Emergence of cloud computing technologies appears indisputable influence on liberalization of IT market and change of rules of the game on it. Even it is at first sight obvious that under the influence of this trend of the Chief information officer change strategy for a portfolio of applications, review road maps of systems, revaluate contracts with vendors. Perhaps, expenses within IT budgets also do not grow, but strategic IT planning is not necessary for the companies cent, and therefore actively develops.

IT heads try to walk in step with a new trend and independently understand the value of that squall of applications which fell upon them from outside "cloud" vendors. "Everything moves to "cloud" - this mantra at everything at the same time appears huge influence and on traditional providers of services whose business keeps on consulting and system integration. The essence of the new report of Forrester Research which is devoted to the impact of "tectonic" changes of the IT industry on her main players consists in it.

IT services enriched many consultants in recent years, the size of the market of IT services will be $450 billion in 2010. At the same time at it there are players from the largest technology giants like IBM, Accenture, HP and up to the small providers focused on a segment of medium and small business, the report says. However, even despite abundance of the innovative solutions, these providers should be prepared for influence of new trends of world IT market seriously: cloud computing and SaaS.

"The worst of economic crises for the last 70 years and also emergence of the cloud computing and software-as-a-service models undermine the future of traditional IT services", - analysts of the company consider. "Though many providers of IT services already realized that inevitable changes approach, is not clear yet what scale of their influence on the industry in general", the document says. will be.

Analysts of Forrester Research state an explicit imbalance between demand for the traditional IT services and IT services provided on the innovation technology models already now. All this threatens providers of IT services with considerable losses of profit, experts note. "Toughening of the macroeconomic environment together with change of pricing models and deliveries of IT services will have significant effect on the usual sphere of IT consulting and IT outsourcing", - analysts of the agency write. At the same time price "erosion" and decrease in marginality of business will be the long-term phenomenon in the market.

The main message of the report for the Chief information officers anxious with the IT budget, consists that in the short term it is worth expecting the general reduction of prices of IT services under the influence of all the factors listed yours. However, in the long term, the prices can go again up therefore it is worth selecting first of all vendors with the high value added of "cloud" services and supports.