Forrester recently surveyed outsourcing service providers to identify patterns among the large outsourcing deals signed by North American firms during the third quarter of 2006. North American outsourcing activity in Q3 2006 surfaced some interesting trends. Deal size generally continued to trend toward smaller total contract values, but the death knell for longer deals seems to have been premature. The applications outsourcing space demonstrated continued strong activity, but the infrastructure space is exhibiting strong year-over-year growth. Financial services and public sector deals remained consistently strong across 2005 and 2006, but there's a notable downturn in manufacturing vertical deals.