New Study Shows Retail IT Services Market Will Expand To $117 Billion By 2021

Research demonstrates that retailers are increasingly turning to outside partners for IT services.

The Retail IT Services market is forecast to grow $31.4b to $117b annually by 2021 according to new research from IHL Group.   Their new report, "At Your Service: Retail IT Services Market Study" examines the worldwide opportunity for IT Services in the Retail and Hospitality Markets, sizing and forecasting IT services worldwide for Application Development, Systems Integration, IaaS, SaaS, Business Process Outsourcing, Digital Transformation, Hardware Maintenance, Software Maintenance, IT Outsourcing, and Other IT Services. This particular report looks at the overall Retail and Hospitality IT Services Market worldwide market and includes forecasts through 2020 and vendor rankings and profiles. 

"The rapid retail transformation being forced by Amazon and Walmart, combined with scarcely available IT talent is forcing retailers to increasingly look to outside partners for IT services," said Greg Buzek, President of IHL Group.  "This is specifically true in the areas of Digital Transformation, Strategic IT Consulting and general IT Outsourcing which we will see triple digit growth rates over the next 5 years."

The research found that Systems Integration, valued at over $27 billion, remains the single largest category of spend in services, but the fastest growing areas over next 5 years will be Digital Transformation (+224%), Strategic IT Consulting (+184%) and IT Outsourcing (108%).

The report also includes revenues by vendor, market positioning, and detailed profiles on the top vendors in the market for the categories of services listed above.

The analysis examines 11 specific categories of IT Services:

• Software Maintenance: All activities related to bug fixes and ongoing updates of existing software systems.
• Hardware Maintenance: Traditional Break/Fix maintenance of hardware products throughout stores and retail enterprise, exclusive of the installation services.
• Systems Integration, On-Premise: Services provided onsite to integrate different systems, including a combination of hardware and software and installation services.
• Systems Integration, SaaS: Software integration and installation services provided in private or public cloud infrastructures designed primarily to integrate software systems that are exchanging data.
• Strategic Consulting: Services generally provided at a higher corporate level that revolve around architecture and optimization of systems for speed, accuracy, redundancy and security, implemented as consulting projects or other categories for specific projects.
• Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): Systems services and non-primary business IT activities that are contracted out to a 3rd party that allow for retailers to focus on their core competencies.
• IT Outsourcing: The core IT functions that are related to application and infrastructure solutions.
• Application Development: Activities related to custom software development, including a wide range of functionalities like solutions from scratch or customizing software to run in the way the retailer wants to operate.
• Digital Transformation: Services focused around the intentional acts and acceleration of transforming business activities, processes and competencies to leverage the changes and opportunities afforded by digital technologies.
• Cloud Services: Services provided to users on demand via the internet and include SaaS services as well as Infrastructure services.
• Other/IT: This is a catch-all category encompassing Big Data, Risk, Fraud, Security, Commerce, Payment, Emerging Technologies, Eco-sustainability, Education, Training, Portals, Content Management, Quality Assurance, Application Load Management, and so on.

IHL explains, “The goal of this report, as well as the entire IHL Retail Executive Advisory Program (REAP), is to provide the retail community with the most detailed and complete picture imaginable of the retail technology landscape. We do this to assist retailers in vendor selection and to help the industry understand the trends, drivers and barriers that are fundamentally transforming our industry.”