Search through our UKHotViews and UKHotViewExtra articles plus complete research reports
Everybody’s pointing at it and talking about it. Some are even trying to feed it. Nobody can ignore it. It’s the digital elephant in the room.
Going digital is today’s ‘big thing’ and it is shaping the direction of travel of the UK software and IT services (SITS) market and the fortunes of its suppliers.
Of course, IT has always been digital by definition. But the term has now been repurposed to suggest, broadly speaking, the transformation of traditional business applications and business processes using modern technologies to take the end-user—and most important of these is the customer—on a ‘journey’ from start to finish, and make the journey such a pleasurable experience they will want to repeat it.
The technologies most frequently employed to facilitate digital transformation are the so-called ‘SMAC stack’, i.e. Social media; Mobile technologies—in which class we should include micro-mobile sensor-based technologies, alluded to as the Internet of Things (IoT); Analytics and big data; and of course, Cloud computing. Indeed, one of the best definitions we have heard for ‘digital’ is ‘integrated SMAC’. It’s the combination of these technologies that holds the promise of transforming the ‘customer journey’.
And therein lies the rationale for TechMarketView’s theme for 2015 Joining the Dots that we launched at the end of last year.
‘Joining the Dots’ represents huge opportunities for IT suppliers. The opportunity starts at the very top of the customers’ businesses, with high-level consulting around the ‘art of the possible’, through to nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts installation, integration and support.
But be prepared. The underlying ‘rules of the game’ in the UK SITS market have not changed. Customers still want more for less (and better for less!) from their suppliers and ever will. And customers want to minimise the inherent and considerable risk in digital transformation by doing things step-by-step and, in any event, seeking to transfer as much of that risk as possible to their suppliers. With the deflationary nature of new technologies, suppliers will find digital transformation challenging for both revenues and margins.
Which is why you really will want and need to read and inwardly digest our annual keynote reports, UK Software and IT Services Market Trends & Forecasts 2015, and UK Software and IT Services Supplier Rankings 2015, published today.
In UK Software and IT Services Market Trends & Forecasts 2015, TechMarketView analysts outline the trends that will drive the market over the next few years across key segments and verticals, and present their forecasts for market growth.
The accompanying report, UK Software and IT Services Supplier Rankings 2015, reveals our authoritative rankings for the leading suppliers of software and IT services (including business process services) to the UK market.
You’ll see some highlights from both reports here in UKHotViews.
UK Software and IT Services Market Trends & Forecasts 2015, and UK Software and IT Services Supplier Rankings 2015 are now available for download by subscription clients of the TechMarketView Foundation Service. If you are not thus blessed, then don’t forget to contact Deb Seth on our client services team who will point the way.
Just remember – you can’t ignore an elephant!
Posted by HotViews Editor at '10:15'
Capita retained its crown as the leading supplier of software, IT and business process services (SITS) to the UK market in 2014 for a second year, widening the gap with second-placed HP and third-ranked IBM.
There’s little sign that the fortunes of the world’s two largest systems vendors are going to change any time soon—or that Capita is going to lose the plot—so we’d expect no change at the top of the rankings for some time to come.
There was no change in the relative ranking of the top five suppliers and the same names appear in the rest of the top ten albeit in a slightly different sequence. This typifies the jockeying for position in a low-growth market, in which ascendancy is achieved by taking share – or by taking a competitor out!
UK Software and IT Services Supplier Rankings 2015, reveals our authoritative rankings for the leading suppliers of software and IT services to the UK market. Rankings are presented by key segment, including Enterprise Software, Application Services, Infrastructure Services, and Business Process Services.
UK Software and IT Services Supplier Rankings 2015, is available for download by subscription clients of the TechMarketView Foundation Service.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '10:14'
It was a better year than we had expected for the UK software and IT services (SITS) market in 2014, with headline growth of 2.1% to £43.6b. But excluding the effects of inflation, this equated to growth in real terms of a mere 0.6%, though this is good news compared to the 0.7% real terms decline in 2013.
And things are going to get better—a little bit.
We forecast faster headline market growth this year, at 2.3% which should represent just over 2% growth in real terms. Market growth will remain pretty close to 2% for the next few years, probably till the end of the decade if not beyond.
As in prior years, business process services (BPS) is the fastest growing segment of the UK SITS market at 5.0% cagr, and will reach £8.5b in 2018. In contrast, the UK infrastructure services market—the largest segment—returned to growth in 2014 but we expect only marginal ongoing improvement to reach £14.2b in 2018.
The UK application services market—the second largest segment—is expected to fare little better, with 1.4% cagr to reach £13.8b in 2018. The UK software market is expected to show 3.0% cagr to reach £10.7b in 2018.
The UK public sector SITS market fared better in 2014 than previously forecast as the expected pre-election slowdown in the second half of the year did not come to pass. We now forecast cagr of 1.8%, reaching a market size of £12.4b in 2018. We expect slightly faster growth in the UK private sector SITS market, at 2.1% CAGR, to reach £34.8b at in 2018.
Low-single digit market growth may look unexciting, but it belies tremendous diversity in the performance of the players, some of whom have grown well into double digits and others shrinking by almost as much. The opportunities are there for the taking for those suppliers willing and able to ‘join the dots’ for their customers.
UK Software and IT Services Market Trends & Forecasts 2015, is available for download by subscription clients of the TechMarketView Foundation Service.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '10:08'
We are delighted to announce the publication of the sixth in the series of TechMarketView Little British Battler reports, profiling the companies that participated in the most recent event.
The companies are:
Each company has been critically assessed by the TechMarketView research team on its proposition and strategy, market positioning, business performance, and future objectives, and includes a succinct SWOT analysis.
TechMarketView Foundation Service subscription clients can download Little British Battlers – The Sixth Sense right here, right now. Others will have to wait until these companies become Big Global Battlers (maybe!) – unless, of course, you contact Deb Seth on our client services team to find out how you can become a subscriber!
Posted by HotViews Editor at '18:10' - Tagged: lbb
Accounts just out from UK-headquartered and privately owned reseller and services firm, SCC, show clearly the progress made over the year (FY15 to 31st March 2015) in growing its services business, while exiting low-margin (pass-through) product resale business. In the UK, headline revenues were down 13.3% to £662m. However, this included a contribution of c£27m in the last financial year from the acquisition of M2 Digital Ltd (made in February 2014 - see SCC buys M2 Digital). Organically UK revenues were down 15%.
The decline was entirely down to the products business; product resale revenues decreased by nearly 20% to £503m (still representing three quarters of the business). Meanwhile, services revenues increased by 22% reaching £159m; excluding M2 Digital, services revenue growth was a still impressive 10%. In other words, SCC is comfortably outperforming the UK infrastructure services market.
Yesterday Georgina O’Toole spoke to Chief Executive James Rigby. TechMarketView subscription service clients can delve deeper into the detail behind the headlines and get a better understanding of SCC’s plans for the year ahead in UKHotViewsExtra. If you are not yet a subscriber, please contact Deb Seth to find out how to rectify the situation!
Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '09:47' - Tagged: results datacentres reseller
The replacement for the NHS’ Choose & Book appointment booking system, the NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS), went live on Monday 18 months later than originally scheduled. Early indications suggest that e-RS may not be a good advert for the pro-SME and open source approach that the Government took when procuring it through the G-Cloud framework.
As e-RS went live, the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) published a ‘summary of known problems/issues’ with the system which details 33 issues that users of the system face at the moment. Then as demand increased yesterday users were prevented from accessing the system.
In short, e-Referrals has all the hallmarks of a system that has gone live too soon before known glitches have been resolved and proper beta testing. Given the history of Choose & Book and the issues with uptake (which had more to do with politics and process change than the system itself - see NHS IT: learning lessons from Choose & Book if you’re a PublicSectorViews subscriber), it will be a huge shame if users’ early experiences of e-RS are negative.
TechMarketView subscription clients can read our full analysis of the story on UKHotViewsExtra today - NHS e-Referrals: here we go again?.
If your organisation doesn’t yet subscribe to TechMarketView’s in-depth research and analysis on the UK software, IT services and business process services markets and you’d like details of our 2015 subscription packages, Deborah Seth from our Client Services team would be happy to help.
Posted by Tola Sargeant at '13:41' - Tagged: health sme agile open+source
In the latest issue of our quarterly round-up of the UK tech funding scene, we meet up with Dr Mark Payton, CEO of Mercia Technologies, the AIM-listed tech investment business based in the West Midlands. Directly, and through its third-party managed funds, Mercia is a prolific investor in UK tech, with a portfolio of over 40 companies.
Subscribers to the TechMarketView Foundation Service can download IndustryViews Venture Capital with a mere click on this link. Others may wish to contact Deb Seth on our client services team to find out how a very modest investment can bring interesting returns.
Posted by HotViews Editor at '08:26' - Tagged: funding
When Amazon announced its Q1 results in April it revealed for the first time the size of its cloud business (Amazon Web Services - AWS). As it turned out, revenue ($4.6bn in FY14 and $1.5bn in Q1 – both +49%) was not far off what we had estimated. In the UK, we estimated FY14 growth was slightly lower at 35% - but still leagues ahead of most other infrastructure services suppliers. Indeed, the figures are an intimidating prospect for established players who are generally achieving single-digit growth at best with some not growing at all.
AWS and other public cloud providers besides have predominantly thrived on the back of business with start-ups and internet/retail firms. Meanwhile, the use of public cloud infrastructure services inside large enterprise organisations is still in its infancy, and although there will be more disruption for incumbent suppliers we do not believe the meteoric rise of AWS equates to the complete demise of the big outsourcing/consulting/SI players (although clearly they are losing some budget to the pure-plays). Indeed, we believe AWS et al will be very reliant on the help of these ‘old world’ players to gain deeper penetration into the very large and lucrative enterprise market.
In this research note we explore some of the key issues that will help determine the growth of emerging cloud players inside large enterprise accounts in the years to come and how this might impact the established infrastructure services players.
Read the research here: Public cloud providers: Unlocking enterprise spend.
This research is only available to InfrastructureViews subscribers. If you would like to become a subscriber, please contact Deb Seth.
Posted by Kate Hanaghan at '15:41' - Tagged: iaas infrastructure AWS PublicCloud
I have just whiled away a morning with the top team at Micro Focus, who were presenting their product line – vastly enlarged since the $2.4bn acquisition of Attachmate Group (see here) – to investors and analysts.
It’s a good story (well, series of stories) and I ‘get it’ and I like it. It turns the word ‘legacy’ into something far more interesting – perhaps especially so for investors.
The way I like to think about Micro Focus is as a product lifecycle management company. I don’t mean they sell PLM products. What I mean is that they manage the life cycle of their huge portfolio of software products, but with the express aim of generating cash. But of course this strategy is not without its challenges.
Eligible TechMarketView subscription service clients can learn more in the expanded version of this post in UKHotViews Extra.
Posted by Anthony Miller at '16:02'
NantHealth may not be a well-known name in UK healthcare IT circles yet, but that could be about to change very quickly. The US-headquartered ‘start up’ has just been appointed by Genomics England to deliver clinical genomic interpretation and reporting capabilities to support the 100,000 Genomes Project. Last week NantHealth also announced a three-year strategic partnership with University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust (UHS).
NantHealth describes itself as ‘a high-speed secure cloud-based information technology provider combining science and big data to transform healthcare’. It is part of the NantWorks ‘ecosystem of companies’ that was founded by billionaire physician, surgeon and scientist Dr Patrick Soon-Shiong in 2011. Soon-Shiong, who has pioneered novel therapies for both diabetes and cancer, is not short of ambition or funding and we can foresee a bright future for NantHealth, which is operating in one of the most exciting areas of the healthcare and life sciences markets.
In our latest UKHotViewsExtra article, TechMarketView’s healthcare analyst, Tola Sargeant, takes a closer look at NantHealth and its two new UK contracts, which could be game-changing for the NHS. Logged in TechMarketView subscription service clients can read the whole story by clicking here.
If you’ve not yet succumbed to the delights of a TechMarketView subscription and you’d like details of our 2015 packages please email Deborah Seth from our Client Services team.
Posted by Tola Sargeant at '12:33' - Tagged: contract health bigdata lifesciences
Intellectual property (IP) ownership is fast becoming a critical area of competitive differentiation for business process services (BPS) providers, seeking to add value to customers in their digital transformation journeys.
We are seeing a surge in investment in business process platform (BPP) IP by IT/BPS providers - companies like Civica, Agilisys, Capita and HP - who are investing in areas like analytics, business process management, and mobile/web self-service, to spear-head new digital engagement with prospects and customers.
Offshore-centric players like Wipro, Infosys, TCS and Genpact meanwhile are stepping up their investments in their own next-gen automation technologies, to counteract increasing offshore commoditisation.
BBP IP provides a way for BPS providers to re-invigorate their BPS value propositions through differentiated tools and services. It is also allowing new entrants to make their mark on the BPS market without the baggage of legacy operations.
This is a dynamic part of the market, pitching BPS providers alongside pure SaaS and software providers. We expect co-opetition will become the norm, as BPS providers partner on the one hand with platform innovators, and compete with them in other areas.
Success is going to be measured by how well BPS providers ‘join the dots’ around this new IP, with traditional BPS services like consulting, business process management and re-engineering, and newer areas like platform provisioning. The overall aim being to drive a step-change improvement in customer business outcomes.
Subscribers to TechMarketView’s BusinessProcessViews research stream can read the new report here: Business Process Platform Opportunities in Digital Transformation.
If you’re not yet a subscriber, please contact Deb Seth (dseth@techmarketview.com) who will be happy to help.
Posted by John O'Brien at '08:34' - Tagged: saas bpaas bps
This is the first in a series of reports highlighting how public sector leaders are addressing the challenges facing their organisations and the implications for software and IT services (SITS) suppliers.
For this report, we spoke to Nick O’Reilly, ICT Director at Derby City Council (DCC), about the Council’s challenges, its recent investments, and future priorities (particularly around TechMarketView’s ‘Sector Shaping Trends (SSTs)’ for 2015. We have also identified key opportunities for SITS suppliers and determined the key lessons that suppliers can take from Derby’s experiences.
PublicSectorViews subscribers can download the research - Local Government: Public Sector CIO Agenda Derby City Council (here).
If you don’t yet subscribe to our PublicSectorViews research stream and you’d like to know more, please contact Deb Seth for details.
Posted by Michael Larner at '15:54' - Tagged: localgovernment transformation
To provide subscribers to FinancialServicesViews with the best service in this dynamic sector, we have decided to launch Payments Bulletin, a regular series of updates providing insight into important aspects of the market and their implications for the suppliers of Software and IT Services. This should enable us to update our subscribers on recent company visits and announcements, comment on industry developments and put forward ideas or opinions to stimulate debate.
In this issue, available here, we look at two aspects of regulation, consistently identified as a key driver of strategy and of investment in technology. The move to create a new UK Regulator and the drive to introduce a revised Payment Service Directive across Europe are evidence of a desire for faster change within the sector, to which payments operators and their suppliers must respond. As the market evolves, this is creating a host of new business models, and in this issue we consider the impact of the move to Faster Payments and the value of understanding end customers.
Finally, as this is the first issue of what we intend to be a regular series, we ask the question, Why is Payments important anyway—and suggest that this subsector is a vital and significant component to the sector as a whole and to the financial performance of many software and IT Services suppliers.
If you are interested in subscribing to FinancialServicesViews, please contact Deb Seth in our Client Services Team.
Posted by Peter Roe at '09:10' - Tagged: financialservices payments platform banking regulation
We are delighted that so many of you have already booked your places at the third annual TechMarketView Presentation & Dinner in September. The event was completely sold out last year and is well on the way to being so again, so if you haven't reserved a place yet don’t leave it until the last minute – book now!
Sponsored by Avnet Technology Solutions and Wells Fargo Capital Finance, the event is to be held on 9 September 2015 in London at RIBA, Portland Place from 6pm onwards. The theme for this year mirrors TechMarketView’s overarching research theme for 2015 - ‘Joining the Dots’. Top of the agenda will be the opportunities and challenges for technology suppliers as the number of ‘things’, datasets and systems that need to be joined together grows.
During the evening TechMarketView’s analyst team, topped and tailed by Chairman Richard Holway MBE and Managing Partner Anthony Miller, present their latest views on the UK software, IT services and business process services markets. TechMarketView’s research directors will highlight emerging trends, hot new opportunities, growing threats and suppliers worth watching, in their respective fields.
The analyst presentations will be preceded by welcome drinks and followed by a pre-dinner drinks reception and then a sumptuous three course dinner. The event, which is attended by ‘the great and the good’ in UK tech, has been a sell-out for the last two years and the networking opportunities are second to none.
Tickets for the event cost £395+VAT per person for TechMarketView subscription clients and £495+VAT for everyone else. There are also some tables of 10 available on a first come, first served basis.
To reserve your place at this year’s TechMarketView Presentation & Dinner click here or contact Tina Compton (Tel: 020 7331 2011) at techUK, who is organising the event for us.
The TechMarketView Presentation & Dinner 2015 is sponsored by
Posted by HotViews Editor at '09:24' - Tagged: events
IPPs – or ‘Indian pure-plays’, the in-vogue term for India-centric IT and BP services suppliers – have long held the dream of being recognised as global services companies in their own right, rather than Indian offshore services firms serving foreign markets.
Well, that recognition comes at a considerable cost!
In our largest ever issue of OffshoreViews, TechMarketView Managing Partner Anthony Miller explains how IPPs are finding themselves competing on a level playing field with top-tier North American and European competitors, and shows why their quest to ‘break linearity’ – i.e. decouple revenue growth from headcount growth – has mostly failed.
We also look in more detail at Capgmini’s $4bn acquisition of India-centric IGATE and compare Indian delivery levels of the ‘enhanced’ Capgemini with its leading North American and European peers.
Plus we look at the prospects of the top five IPPs, and:
And as usual, OffshoreViews includes insightful financial and operating metrics for the leading IPPs with our latest estimates for worldwide and UK performance.
This is the one issue of OffshoreViews you simply cannot afford to miss!
Subscribers to the TechMarketView Foundation Service can download OffshoreViews now! Others should contact Deb Seth and she will show you how you can get what you really wish for!
Posted by HotViews Editor at '09:30' - Tagged: offshore
