The move toward outsourced cloud services will change the requirements that outsourcers and service providers will need to meet to align with the performance and relationship expectations of customers, according to a new report by market research and analysis firm IDC.
The study ‘US Customers Give Outsourcers a Thumbs Up in Performance, But Expectations Are on the Rise with the Move Toward Outsourced Cloud Services’, indicates access to new delivery models, such cloud, software as a service (SaaS) is becoming very important.
The research house said that increased need to use these new models is going to elevate customer expectations regarding the performance of their providers and subsequently change their relationship with providers.
IDC vice president of outsourcing and offshore services market research David Tapper said, perhaps the greatest lesson of the Great Recession is the need for companies to be much more adaptable to changes in the market.
"This fundamental need is a major force driving considerable shifts in the outsourcing industry – shifts that not only involve provisioning more targeted and innovative solutions – but also involve the transformation of the outsourcing industry from a labor-centric model of service delivery to more asset-based services involving cloud-based outsourcing," Tapper said.
IDC believes that players looking to compete successfully in the market for outsourced cloud services will need to develop robust road maps of how customers are looking to adopt these utility-based services that cut across entire organisation requirements.
The firm said that as part of succeeding, many outsourcers and providers will need to make adjustments to their delivery capabilities, partnership ecosystems, business models, and service offerings.
They will also need to extend their view of who they are and who they will be competing with within and beyond the traditional market of IT and business process services.
