IBM tops IT services league table

IBM has maintained its role as the IT services kingpin, coming out on top of a league table from analyst Gartner.

The company holds 7.2 percent of the worldwide IT services market, followed by EDS, Fujitsu, Accenture, HP and CSC, according to Gartner.

But its growth rate is among the slowest of the top six. Accenture and EDS are the fastest growing companies in the upper ranking, growing by 7.8 percent and 7.6 percent from 2005 to 2006 respectively.

Despite talk of the threat of Indian-based IT services companies, these businesses account for just three percent of worldwide revenues, according to Gartner, compared to 57 percent for US-based vendors.

Katharine Hale, vice president at Gartner, said that, without significant acquisitions, it would take India-based vendors many years to reach even half the revenue of US-based vendors.

Overall worldwide IT services revenue totalled $672.3bn in 2006, up 6.4 percent from the previous year. BPO services showed the strongest growth at 8.6 percent, while Gartner described development and integration services as the "backbone" of the market, given they account for 30 percent of total revenues.

Though the usual suspects top the list, together they account for just one-fifth of the total market, indicating this is a diverse area with plenty of players.

IBM Global Services was recently voted the world's best outsourcing company by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals.