SAP Application Management (AM)... it's been a good place to be in '09, and should continue to be for '10

Despite a market size this is less than half of the SAP Consulting & Systems Integration (C&SI) market, SAP Application Management (AM) has continued to be a safe-haven for many IT services suppliers in the SAP space, especially those with strong infrastructure skills and outsourcing prowess (especially IBM, CSC, HP/EDS, Accenture, etc...) and PAC estimates that this year, the SAP AM market will have grown by 5.5% worldwide, compared to an estimated decline of -2.7% for SAP C&SI.

My colleague, Julia Reichhart, a director at PAC Munich, has just completed a comprehensive review of this important market segment, and it is clear that this SAP services segment has evolved, like so many areas of outsourcing, beyond the "your mess for less" approach that was pretty common in the 90's, into a service that helps customers to transform fragmented SAP landscapes, while optimizing processes to offer better support and flexibility to the business.

Based on Julia's discussions with dozens of users and suppliers, here's a high-level view of many of the market drivers we're seeing right now...



For more details from this report (including the analysis of different deliver models, best practices, sizing and growth rates), please check out our main webpage on SAP Services Research.