Manila, Philippines

IT transformation has been the theme of outsourcing market since the start of 2016. More end users have been engaged in outsourcing projects in 2016 because of the need to consolidate resources and scale down IT infrastructure cost. Hosted services have been driving the growth of overall outsourcing market. SMEs are more conventional on their ICT priorities, focusing on the improvement of their basic infrastructure, while large enterprises are taking into account the enhancement of new technology requirement, hence more project-based (e.g. Systems Integration (SI) and IT consulting) and managed services (e.g. data center outsourcing) opportunities. Project-oriented services, as a proportion of total services spend in the country, increased. This can be attributed to the demand for consulting and systems integration services for data center deployments, the movement to cloud, and need for Big Data and analytics-centric projects. Enterprises are increasingly opting for outsourcing to reduce costs, have faster service delivery, better manage their finances, and integrate business processes easily. Furthermore, growth was enhanced by the expansion of global BFSI and manufacturing companies. As a result, there was an increased demand for colocation services, server hosting, and cloud-based services. SIs in the Philippines are very traditional, which are still hardware-centric. Most SIs are still transitioning to becoming solutions providers, and some have just started infusing 3rd Platform technologies in their products. In addition, they plan to expand outside of Metro Manila and other regions like ASEAN and North America. Key promotion and pricing strategies are tied with the principals for most of them. Some end users are in wait-and-see mode in terms of technology adoption, but they prefer vendors that they trust and work with. One of the strategies is to work with local system integrators that have over the years established strong connections with end users in the financial services, telecommunications, and manufacturing industries. Leading IT vendors like IBM, HP, Oracle have established a strong presence in this country with local partners like Questronix, Fountainhead Technologies, Jupiter Systems, AMTI are some of the best names in the local IT industry. There is a huge market for risk management consultancy services in association with IT projects, either directly working with customers or via system integrators.