This IDC study analyzes the U.S. application outsourcing (AO) competitive landscape by examining and comparing a select list of service providers. The competitive landscape in the U.S. AO services market is highly dynamic, impacted by both a wide variety of macrolevel trends and the emergence of several newly competitive vendors. The purpose of this document is to help services vendors, their customers, alliance partners, and the financial community differentiate the capabilities of firms that compete in the U.S. AO market. The study looks at the performance of these firms in addition to their key growth strategies and future directions. Which companies will be able to meet future challenges and market shifts? Who will survive and thrive in this business climate, and who will lead the wave of change? These are some of the key questions explored in the study.

Thirteen vendors are profiled in depth in this study. After each profile is an IDC evaluation in a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) grid. Also included is an IDC Leadership Grid, in which we position each participant against two axes: ability to gain share and alignment with market opportunities. Pure-play offshore vendors will be analyzed in a separate document to be published later. The vendors profiled in this study are:

"The highly competitive U.S. AO services market demands that vendors be constantly innovating their delivery models and their services offerings to both manage and transform their customers' application portfolios. With an increasing need to invest in intelligent global sourcing strategies, modernization services, new delivery models, and a wide variety of industry-specific solutions, only a select group of vendors will be able to gain share over the next several years," said Barry Rubenstein, program manager for Application Outsourcing and Offshore Services at IDC.