IT industry facing shift from products to services

Analyst Forrester says that services will become the key IT battleground of the future

The next five years is likely to see a significant shift from product-led delivery of IT to services-based IT delivery, forcing many leading technology vendors to change the way they operate and market themselves, according to a new report by analyst firm Forrester.

The analyst predicts the creation of a new IT ecosystem in which top vendors, such as Dell, HP and Oracle, will need to partner in order to deliver solutions and services. It will be driven by "market forces of commoditisation, miniaturisation, industrialisation, and globalisation", as well as the changing demands of IT buyers in large enterprises.

The drivers will partly come from businesses looking to global service providers to take much of the cost out of IT, as well as technological advances that mean IT departments are struggling to cope with the requirements placed upon them, explained report co-author Andrew Parker.

"Much of this environment is driven by new forms of service delivery, innovation and software-as-a-service," he added. "In the past, companies such as Microsoft or SAP could think mainly about selling products but in future they'll have to think about other forms of software delivery and that's likely to happen at an accelerated level."