Increased Complexity
New technologies such as virtualization promise to make everything easier and more flexible. But in reality they create a more dynamic computing environment, which is really code for a more volatile computing environment. Of course, any thing that is more volatile usually spells opportunity for IT services companies.

Managed Services
Most solution providers are still billing customers based on time and material. But managed service technologies are making their overall IT services business a lot more profitable because they are rolling fewer trucks to visit customers.

Cloud Computing
The reinvention of the hosted computing model should create opportunities for solution providers to shift from a managed services model that requires them to manage equipment on their customer’s premise to a model where all the computing assets are owned and managed by the solution provider. That should make servicing that equipment a whole lot easier and substantially more profitable.

Compliance
With a new presidential administration comes a whole host of new regulations that will require customers to invest more in governance and risk management technologies.

Business Intelligence
Most customers were blind-sided by the economic downturn, so now they want to make sure that doesn’t happen again, especially now that they know how fragile the business really is in terms of what even small disruptions in the supply chain can mean to the sustainability of the overall enterprise.

Security
As the economy declines, crime rates tend to rise. The folks perpetrating these attacks have more sophisticated tools that can now target specific people and types of users. That means customers desperately need better risk management systems than the ones they deployed to fight relatively simple virus attacks.