European IT services companies had their best trading year since 1986, last year, reveals Paris-based consultants, Pierre Audoin Conseil (PAC), in its sixth annual analysis of the European services market, released yesterday. The European software and IT services market was worth more than $110bn in 1998 up 20% on the previous year
Some mid-sized IT services companies ($10 to $100m annual revenue) showed growth rates of up to 50% according to the report but France’s Cap Gemini was the only European company to remain in the global top ten. The report singled out France’s Cap Gemini, GFI Informatique, Sopra and Unilog, the UK’s Admiral, CMG and Logica and Germany’s Debis Systemhaus, Mummert and Gedas as top performers – boosted by stock market listings as a source of growth capital.
PAC predicts the pace of growth will slow from last years annual rate of 15%, to 12% in the next three years. It says market slack after the end of Y2K compliance contracts will be picked up by the strong emergence of demand for e-commerce, customer relationship management and supply chain management services.
In 1998, for the first time in many years, services for IT projects showed the highest growth in the market at 20%, alongside IT-enabled business process outsourcing for instance pensions and payroll processing. In contrast demand for software products in the services market grew by only 13.5%.
