Rising demand for IT services in Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa has spurred competition among providers. Small and medium-sized firms often have the resources and talent to take on regional and global players in winning contracts. This means that knowing the competition, their turnover, and their rates of growth is essential to holding on to clients and acquiring new ones. IDC's Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa Semiannual IT Services Vendor Tracker® is an invaluable complement to our forecaster and annual report series. It helps you assess the competition when planning product development, new hires, and customer-relationship strategies.

This tracker provides total market size and vendor shares for the following technology areas and segmentations. Measurement for this tracker is in vendor revenue.

Technologies and subtechnologies:

• Support and training services
• Project services (system integration, consulting)
• Outsourcing services

Segmentations:

• By vendor activity
• By type of provider: international, regional, local

• Central and Eastern Europe: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Rest of CEE
• Middle East and Africa: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, UAE

This tracker is delivered on a semiannual basis with tools such as pivot tables. The delivery schedule for this tracker is as follows:

• Preliminary top 5: week 16 after period closes
• Preliminary top 10: week 16 after period closes
• Historical data: week 16 after period closes
• Forecast data: week 16 after period closes

IDC's tracker data is developed using a rigorous methodology that includes well-planned and well-coordinated local, regional, and worldwide data cross-checks combined with a proprietary advanced data consolidation and analysis data platform managed by IDC's Worldwide Tracker organization. Data sources used in the process of determining IDC's tracker numbers include, but are not limited to:

• In-country local vendor interviews
• Distribution data feeds
• Worldwide and regional vendor guidance
• ODM data
• In-country local channel partner discussions
• Import records
• Feedback from component suppliers
• Vendor briefings and public financial reports

IDC trackers provide the accurate and timely market size, vendor share, and forecast information you need to identify market and product expansion opportunities, increase revenues, and win market share. IDC's tracker research is a critical input to the planning and monitoring cycles of the business process. Common uses of the tracker data include:

Planning Process

• Regional, state or city-level planning — setting regional, country, state or city-level sales targets based on market opportunity
• Product marketing — creating a product strategy and road map based on currently available product features and expected growth
• Production planning — using customer demand data as an input in the creation of production schedules
• Product portfolio planning — accessing accurate and detailed data as an input into the product development process

Monitoring Process

• Performance measurement — comparing vendor performance on prior fiscal periods
• Competitive analysis — reviewing competitor performance across multiple dimensions: product, features, channel, segment, geography
• Sales forecasting measurement — assessing internal sales forecast versus actual results
• Price benchmarking — comparing vendor versus market pricing data by model
• Marketing communications — using positive results for messaging in the press, at partner events, or in sales collateral