The Forrester Wave™: European Remote Infrastructure Management, Q4 2006

Forrester evaluated the leading European and global service providers across 24 criteria with regards to their remote infrastructure management (RIM) services. We found that IBM Global Services and EDS have consolidated their leadership in what constitutes a growing market across Europe. EDS shows the strongest delivery capabilities and also has very strong market presence. IBM leads on strategy, thanks mainly to its financial services, many technical partnerships, and developing ability to deliver Adaptive Sourcing. CSC, Capgemini, HP, and Getronics are the strongest challengers, with aggressive growth plans and investments in industrialization. Almost all players continue to build their offshore and nearshore capabilities. On this front, they are trying to attract clients by reducing prices, but are still faced with the resistance or skepticism of European companies. Services related to infrastructure management have always tended to be stable, recurrent, and routine activities. In the future, however, RIM will share with other areas of IT service delivery the need to offer clients increasing flexibility, variability, and innovation — both in service delivery models and in outcomes for the client.