High demand for project-based services and software support has helped the global IT services market achieve a six percent growth rate in 2005, Gartner has said.

High demand for project-based services and software support has helped the global IT services market achieve a six percent growth rate in 2005, Gartner has said.

The research company found that worldwide IT services revenue totalled $624.4 billion in 2005, up from $588.9 billion in 2004.

IT services in the APAC IT region did even better achieving a 12.7 percent growth rate to $38 billion for the same period.

Gartner IT Services Group research vice president Kathryn Hale said that these figures had bucked the sector’s traditional growth trend.

“The outsourcing service segment has been the key growth area for the worldwide IT services market, but that trend was altered in 2005," she said. "In 2005, project-based services and software support grew at a greater rate than the overall market average, which has not been the case since 2000."

In the vendor rankings a definite shift away from the top six services vendors to smaller providers was also observed during the year.

In the global vendor rankings, 78.6 percent of the services market was owned by companies falling outside the top six services companies. This figure was up 6.5 percent on 2004.

Of the big-name vendors, IBM continued to lead the global market with 7.8 percent market share, followed by EDS with 3.4 percent and Fujitsu with 2.9 percent. HP achieved 2.6 percent, Accenture 2.4 and CSC 2.3 percent.

In the APAC region companies outside the top six accounted for 72.3 percent of the market, up 12.1 percent. Of the branded vendors, IBM lead with 9.0 percent share, Samsung with 4.6 percent, HP 4.1 percent, LG CNS 3.9 percent, EDS 3.6 percent, and SK C&C 2.5 percent.