Five emerging trends impacting the IT consulting services market

The top five emerging trends driving the global IT consulting services according to Technavio are:

• Adoption of environment-friendly technology
• Growing preference for remote working environments
• Increase in service offshoring
• Increase in market consolidation
• Rise in use of cloud-based IT infrastructure.

Adoption of environment-friendly technology

In the fast-changing technological environment, hardware needs to be upgraded every few years. This is prompting suppliers to adopt greener models in a bid to reduce wastage and pollution, and enhance recyclability.

According to Angad Singh, a category specialist at Technavio, “Organizations are increasing focusing on reducing their carbon footprints to gain acceptance from governments and clients. Also, adopting environment-friendly technology saves resources in the long run.”

Growing preference for remote working environments

Remote working environments eliminate travel time and effort and facilitates wider collaboration. As a result, organizations are increasingly adopting them. In fact, around 60% of employees in North America prefer to work remotely.

Increase in service offshoring

Organizations are expanding their operations to emerging markets such as India, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. This is driving the demand for IT consultants that can effectively integrate the IT systems located in these countries with the organizational facilities in other regions. This way, organizations can save on costs as they can hire skilled labor at a much lower costs. It also helps integrate IT systems across the globe.

Increase in market consolidation

Companies with revenues of less than $1 billion are resorting to consolidation to overcome growth challenges. In 2015, mergers and acquisitions of technology were valued at $459.6 billion, 11% higher than the previous record of 2000 (20 deals topped USD 1 billion, while three topped $10 billion).

These consolidations are expected to have a significant impact on the IT consulting services industry, as they enable the integration of IT systems and infrastructure across platforms.

Rise in use of cloud-based IT infrastructure

Organizations have been consistently shifting to cloud-based IT infrastructure such as SaaS models over the past five years, as these models are cost-effective and provide easy access to data across geographies.

IT consultants help buyers migrate to new cloud-based technologies and also ensure effective integration of these technologies with existing legacy systems. They also use clouds as tools to centralize and organize businesses of clients, which, in turn, helps them in effectively managing projects and resources.