Opportunities for savvy IT companies abound

$37.5 billion of long-running IT contracts are set to expire in the next six months, providing opportunities for savvy IT providers, according to independent technology analyst Ovum.

According to Ovum’s new ICT Opportunity Profiler tool, which forecasts ICT spend by type, location, sector and company, the greatest opportunities will come in the financial services, energy and utilities, and communications industries followed by government and not-for-profit; aerospace and defence, and life sciences.

Ian Charlesworth, Research Director at Ovum, comments: “In the face of ever-increasing competition and continued cost-cutting as a result of the global economic slowdown, business development teams must work as efficiently as possible. Those that focus resources on contracts they know are coming up, take the time to understand their customers’ sector and carefully target their approach will be the winners in the long term.

Ovum’s research examined over 20 business sectors, identifying over 500 IT contracts due to expire before September 2010.

Charlesworth concludes: “Working with dedicated sector analysts at Datamonitor, we’ve been able to not only understand which companies are preparing to spend on ICT and review the incumbent provider but to also examine the key business drivers in the sector and how these will impact on ICT spend.

“With hundreds of contracts ranging in value from $1 million to $1 billion potentially coming onto the market in the next few months, business development teams can quickly gain competitive advantage in a difficult market by knowing who is going to be spending and why.”