"As an IT executive, it is critical to continue to seek out opportunities to help the business grow through IT enablement. Cloud, mobile, social, and big data/analytics are all powerful tools as they are highly desired by the business to reach their growth objectives," said Rebecca Segal, Vice President, Global Services Markets and Trends. "As an IT services vendor, great care must be taken to understand the needs of both sides (business and IT) and act as a change agent in bringing these two sides closer together."
Additional key study findings include:
- Most projects around the 3rd Platform involve more than one of the four pillar technologies as customers see the true benefit in enablement and leverage across the 3rd Platform.
- The US, UK, and Australia are more focused on IT services for applications than for infrastructure.
- Line of business (LOB) and IT respondents differ in the value they place on different vendor qualities. Given the need to please both sides, services firms must have business and industry expertise to win deals in 2014.
The IDC study, Worldwide Services Leading Indicators Survey, 2014 (IDC #248670), highlights survey results across 14 industries with interviews in six countries: Australia, China, France, Germany, the UK and the US. The survey examined whether spending on external services will increase, decrease or stay the same in 2014; what the business priorities are for 2014, and what the key drivers of spending will be; as well as which business priorities are being addressed with new IT initiatives.