Gartner: IT Outsourcing To Top $251 Billion in 2012

Market research firm Gartner estimates that global spending on IT outsourcing will surpass a quarter trillion dollars for the first time this year.

In 2011, organizations worldwide spent about $246.6 billion and are forecasted to end up at $251.7 billion in 2012. The fastest growing outsourcing area is cloud computing services, which will add 48.7 percent or $1.6 billion to reach $5.0 billion.

"Today, cloud compute services primarily provide automation of basic functions. As next-generation business applications come to market and existing applications are migrated to use automated operations and monitoring, increased value in terms of service consistency, agility and personnel reduction will be delivered", said Gregor Petri, research director at Gartner. "Continued privacy and compliance concerns may however negatively impact growth in some regions, especially if providers are slow in bringing localized solutions to market."

Data center outsourcing(DCO) will remain the largest segment in IT outsourcing, but reduce its share by 1 percent to 34.5 percent, Gartner estimates.

As Europe continues to face economic challenges, Gartner believes that the Asia/Pacific region will show the highest IT outsourcing growth of all regions worldwide. In North America, Gartner believes that organizations will be looking increasingly for annuity-managed service relationships for cost take-out and IT costs.

Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.com blog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

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