European Telecom Operator Managed Services Deals Survey: H2 2007

Forrester's fourth survey of managed services contracts signed by telecom service providers takes the lid off 177 European service deals sealed in the second half of 2007. The number of deals was up significantly from the 120 that we tracked in H1 2007, but the total contract value fell to €2.1 billion, down from €2.6 billion in the previous half-year. The average deal size shrank, the number of small contracts increased, and there was a big drop in the number of megadeals. In the traditional communication services category, the most unexpected trend was the reduction in the number of deals including managed audio and video conferencing — present in only 1% of deals compared with 4% last time. In IT services, the most dramatic increase was in managed local area network (LAN) services, from 7% to 13%, but there was a big drop in the number of deals including desktop services. Overall, telco IT services sales recovered compared with H1 2007. The percentage of converged deals — those with both telecom and an IT services component — was up from 22% to 27%, but it still did not reach the 31% level of H2 2006.