Markets and Trends

IDC’s Top 10 Worldwide Services 2021 Predictions

Explore IDC's top 10 predictions for IT and Business Services in 2021 and beyond, straight from the latest IDC FutureScape.
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This blog lists IDC’s top 10 worldwide predictions for IT and Business Services.  These predictions are meant to help the enterprise with strategic planning within a typical five-year business planning cycle.

Senior line-of-business and IT leaders are learning how buyer requirements are shifting in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and placing greater pressure on services firms and providers to meet critical needs in areas such as EX (employee experience), use of innovation centers, and supporting multicloud environments. IDC’s 2021 Worldwide Services FutureScape provides guidance in how to respond to these market pressures.

The predictions from the IDC FutureScape for Worldwide Services are:

  1. By 2025, three quarters of organizations looking to drive revenue growth will only select vendors that can offer a portfolio of strategy, design, and technology services.
  2. By 2024, nearly 55% of firms will utilize PaaS as the primary application development platform to develop custom applications and drive DevOps maturity deeper through their application portfolios.
  3. By the end of 2021, 70% of organizations with mature EX programs will have returned to pre-2020 growth trajectories, compared with only 20% of organizations with immature EX programs.
  4. By 2022, over 90% of vendors’ innovation centers will be repurposed as hybrid virtual and physical innovation networks rather than as dedicated spaces where people must meet face-to-face to innovate.
  5. By 2023, more than 70% of firms will use multicloud management platform capabilities as part of managed cloud services to standardize tools sets, ensure quality of service and enable demand management.
  6. By the end of 2021, 32% of organizations will be leveraging employee persona based profiles to provide an enhanced employee experience.
  7. By 2023, over two-thirds of G2000 organizations will have incorporated Service Delivery resilience assessment and assurance into over 75% of all their externally sourced Business and IT services.
  8. By 2022, just over 50% of organizations with 1,000+ employees will accelerate their digital transformation projects (36% are accelerating now), making the remaining firms increasingly disadvantaged.
  9. By 2024, over 75% of organizations will implement some level of automation across multiple processes, to drive higher level of process optimization and to free up operational cash.
  10. By 2024, more than 45% of organizations will prioritize faster turnaround and speed to value as one of the top 3 vendor criteria in selecting services vendors.

For more context and deeper insights around these and any of our other worldwide technology predictions, click here to explore our IDC FutureScape Web Conferences.

Research Manager, Employee Experience: Benefits, Wellness and Employee Engagement