Without a doubt, the tech industry’s new economics are creating major tumult in the marketplace. “Services,” not products, and “in the cloud,” not on the computer, are just two of the major trends forcing IT services providers to continually predict future market demand and adjust strategy accordingly. More than ever, it’s imperative to understand where firms will rely on third-party providers in the coming year . . . and also where they’ll increase spend.

As you may know, Forrester fields a 20-minute Web survey each year to commercial buyers of enterprise IT services as part of Forrester’s Forrsights for Business Technology (formerly named “Business Data Services”). This year, we’ll continue to collect responses from IT decision-makers at companies with 1,000 or more employees across the US, Canada, France, the UK, and Germany. As we’re designing the survey now, our commitment to strategists is that we’ll write the questions with your underlying need in mind: to predict and quantify tech industry growth and disruption. 

Here are a few new questions you’ll be able to answer with our 2010 data insights:

Which areas of innovation are turned into business- or IT-funded projects? . . . How mature is vendor governance/oversight compared with three years ago? . . . How are firms dealing with the rising influence of Digital Natives? . . . What are the plans, strategies, and barriers for moving from a staff augmentation to a fully managed services model? . . . How will an uptick in selective sourcing strategies translate to you as the service provider tailoring your go-to-market plans according to current customer challenges?

And, of course, we’ll continue to ask traditional questions around services plans, budgets, and preferred vendors. 

Clients of Forrester’s Forrsights can expect the final data results at the beginning of October. In the meantime, don’t forget to read The Coming Upheaval In Tech Services

You will see Forrester’s Forrsights data pop up in this blog from time to time, but if you’d like some more info right now, check out the Forrester Forrsights portion of our Web site. 

Let us know what data you need to help make your decisions, and stay tuned!