By Eleanor Reader
Australia’s IT services market is rapidly transitioning to a utility-based consumption model, an IDC study has found.
With the potential of mobile broadband, mobile smart devices, cloud, social media and big data, traditional services that utilise little automation are changing.
According to IDC, buyers need not just lower costs but services that meet more stringent requirements, such as always-on, rapid provisioning, and the ability to adjust service requirements more quickly, resulting in providers of application and infrastructure outsourcing needing to help buyers optimize their IT investments.
This means using more industrialised and agile processes for application outsourcing and incorporating much greater levels of automation and self-service capabilities across all the IT aspects of an organisation.
It is becoming more common for these services to be delivered via cloud model, states IDC.
“This growing use of cloud services is delivering above average growth rates for professional services aligned with cloud delivery. The combined growth for revenue from applications, system integration and network consulting for cloud services is, in 2013, expected to be 27{db8ca4bbfe57dc8f9b6df9233a3a6c04f4968125edf9bb330d4f787c3a87cd09} above that of 2012,” the company said in a statement.
IDC’s June 2012 Australia Managed Services Study revealed that the top change organisations are looking to make when their current outsourcing/managed services contract expires is to move to a utility-based model.
More than 40{db8ca4bbfe57dc8f9b6df9233a3a6c04f4968125edf9bb330d4f787c3a87cd09} of organisations will be shifting a portion of their outsourcing/managed services activity and spending to cloud services in the next 12 – 24 months.
“Responding to these changes, over the course of the next five years, IT services providers will increasingly change their business models to mimic those of pure-play cloud providers by making strategic investments,” says Raj Mudaliar, senior market analyst of IDC’s Australia IT Services Research Group.
“These investments will incorporate the different elements of a digital services supply chain that includes a larger footprint of cloud datacenter infrastructure; an app store for services; an integrated, policy-based management system for services procurement, a cloud factory; an ‘independent’ testing service; and/or sense-predict-respond capabilities, to name a few.”
