This IDC study summarizes the results of the Japan IT Outsourcing Survey conducted in March 2005. It analyzes the IT outsourcing usage among Japanese companies, including application service provider (ASP) usage, business process outsourcing (BPO) usage, and business continuity measures.

The Japan IT outsourcing services market has entered a period of stable growth. The importance of creating new service value for customers has also increased. In response to user companies' needs for business improvement and reform, blanket long-term IT outsourcing and BPO services are now accompanied by the provision of strategic value-added services (VASs) like offers of recommendations/appraisals to improve/reform the outsourced business as well as other related operations. "In order to provide such VASs, it is important to build relationships with organizations related not only to the business units but also to the management and undertaking proposals for long-term business improvement and reform. Through such long-term relationships, service vendors can increase customers' levels of satisfaction and at the same time gain the trust and loyalty of customers, thereby resolving their dissatisfaction and concerns," says IDC Japan's IT Services Research, market analyst, Akimasa Nakao.