This IDC study looks at the development of the IT outsourcing market and how it fits into the IT services space as a whole. The IT outsourcing space is quickly changing as the vendor ecosystem evolves and as the market becomes increasingly global in nature. The outsourcing market is composed of several subsectors, namely hosted application management (HAM), hosted infrastructure services (HIS), application management (AM), network and desktop outsourcing service (NDOS), and finally enterprisewide outsourcing.

"The IT projects of yesteryear that ran late and over budget have encouraged businesses to limit the size and length of new contracts. Outsourcers are now competing for smaller and more specialised contracts that they were a few years ago," says Stefan Nordbruch, market analyst, IDC New Zealand.