Companies of nearly every size are spending more on outside help to run their technology, and a new market report suggests that trend still has years of room to run. According to a report from Research and Markets, the global IT services market was valued at roughly $1.61 trillion in 2025 and is projected to reach almost $3.48 trillion by 2034, growing at an annual rate of 8.93% between 2026 and 2034.
It helps to understand what falls under the umbrella of IT services before getting into why the market is expanding so quickly. The category includes consulting, systems integration, application development, infrastructure management, cybersecurity and managed services, essentially the outside expertise businesses hire when they need help planning, building or running their technology. As more of a company’s operations move online or into the cloud, that outside expertise tends to become less optional and more essential.
A big part of the growth comes from what the report calls enterprise digital transformation. Organizations are retiring older systems, moving workloads to the cloud and automating processes that used to require manual work. That shift is not limited to one industry either. Banking, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications and government agencies are all named in the report as sectors increasing their technology investment, largely to improve resilience, customer engagement and day to day productivity.
Artificial intelligence is another major thread running through the report. As generative AI moves out of the experimental stage and into actual production use, companies need help integrating it with existing systems, managing data quality and privacy, and establishing some form of governance around how it is used. The report expects demand for AI consulting and AI focused managed services to rise significantly in the years ahead as a result.
Managed services in particular are becoming a bigger piece of the pie. Rather than hiring internal teams for every function, many organizations are outsourcing cloud operations, network monitoring, cybersecurity and technical support to specialized providers. Hybrid work arrangements and the sheer complexity of running operations across multiple cloud platforms are pushing more companies in this direction, since keeping all of that expertise in house has become harder to justify.
None of this growth is without friction. The report points to a persistent shortage of skilled workers in fields like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cloud architecture, DevOps and data engineering. That shortage is not a minor footnote either, since it directly affects how quickly providers can staff up to meet demand. Firms are having to invest more heavily in recruitment, training and certification programs just to keep pace, all while trying to hold the line on pricing and service quality.
Geographically, the report singles out four markets as leaders in this next phase of growth. The United States remains dominant thanks to its mature digital economy and heavy concentration of major technology companies. Germany’s growth is tied to Industry 4.0 manufacturing and financial services modernization. India continues to build on its role as a global delivery hub, supported by a large technology workforce and expanding public sector digitization. Saudi Arabia rounds out the list, with its Vision 2030 initiative driving investment in digital government, smart cities and energy sector modernization.
Large enterprises remain the biggest spenders in this market, given their global footprints and complex compliance requirements, but the report also flags the banking, financial services and insurance sector as a particular area of strength going forward, citing digital banking platforms, fraud detection and real time payments as areas likely to draw further investment.
Taken together, the numbers describe a market that is not chasing a short-term trend but responding to a longer running shift in how organizations operate. Cloud infrastructure, AI adoption and cybersecurity needs are not going away, and neither, it seems, is the demand for the outside expertise required to manage them.
