IDC expects this competition to intensify further over the next few years, as multinational companies, including large Indian systems integrators, look to tap the growing IT services market in the kingdom. Thanks to their large cash reserves and falling margins from their established geographic segments in North America and Europe, multinationals could look to acquisitions, joint-ventures or partnership-type models to launch or expand their presence in Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, local telecom operators, faced with slowing growth in their core business, are also looking at IT services to widen their revenue sources, while leveraging their existing networks, and capitalizing on their previous experience of offering services to a wide variety of customer base. As they do this, they will begin to emerge as a unified point of contact for organizations’ communication and IT needs – a favorable situation for both parties.
The emergence of new services delivery models like cloud will further increase competitive pressures in the near future, by shifting the market differentiators from relationships and on-the-ground staff to cost and quality of service. “The level of competition is expected to become even more intense as the kingdom attracts greater attention on the back of robust oil revenues, and increasing infrastructure and social spending,” says Sony John, senior research analyst, IT Services, for IDC MEA. “Progressive vendors will differentiate themselves by matching expectations and fulfilling SLAs, while looking to ease customers into higher-value services and emerging delivery models by marketing strong value propositions, presenting convincing business cases, piloting implementations, implementing transition plans and support capabilities, and sharing some of the customer’s risks through innovative deal planning.”
In the long term, the entry of more players in the IT services market bodes well for Saudi Arabian customers and the IT services market as a whole, as end users will be able to choose from a wider variety of services and providers, thus encouraging outsourcing.
IDC’s Competitive Profiles and Analysis of Leading IT Services Players in Saudi Arabia, 2011 study presents the top 100 IT services providers in Saudi Arabia, including their market shares based on their respective performances in 2010. Furthermore, it examines in great detail the performance of the top 10 IT services providers in Saudi Arabia. The study further presents these companies in IDC’s Leadership Grid to illustrate current competitive positioning in 2010 and to illustrate the changes in position that are likely to occur over the forecast period. The study contains market size and shares for the top 10 services vendors by IDC’s 13 foundation market categories.
Source:http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20120105084200
