El sector IT Services y las compañías de servicios tecnológicos se han visto en una situación nunca antes presente y todo a causa de la pandemia COVID-19, l. Pero previamente a explicar qué ha sucedido y qué sucederá a partir de ahora, aclaremos la definición de los servicios tecnológicos o IT Services. Gartnerdefines information technology services as the application of business and technical expertise to enable organisations to create, manage, access or optimise information and business processes. 

Once defined, we will look at how the sector has evolved up to the pandemic, and then focus on the changes it has brought about in the information technology services sector.  

IT Services antes del COVID-19 

Up to this point, the IT Services sector was growing at a rate of 2.2%, which is a constant figure and not bad considering the crisis we have suffered in the last 10 years. Although it is true that in the last four months of 2019 they rose 30 basis points (0.03%), 400 points (4%) less than the previous year. According to Elitsa Bakalova, an analyst with the firm TBRThis happened because providers in the IT services sector kept investing to expand their portfolios and resources. That idea was going to allow them to have more movement in terms of business transformation initiatives.  

IT Services during and after COVID-19 

But as the pandemic spread around the globe, companies had to radically change the business ideas they had in mind for 2020 and even for the years to come. In the case of IT Service companies, it is true that many of their customers are rapidly moving their workloads to cloud environments, in this case to the hybrid cloud, one of the many services offered by the IT Services sector, to be able to work from home, for example.  

But, on the other hand, it should be noted that technology companies have been hit hard as many companies are delaying or cutting IT spending in the short term. In turn, the sector's industries will also be affected by the large amount of work they will have to do in the short term while their customers are completely or partially idle. This will cause a massive slowdown in IT Service projects as spending in the sector's businesses is reduced. 

Finalmente, saber que cuando la pandemia se vaya reduciendo las empresas deberían comprometerse, según los expertos, con los proveedores de servicios gestionados para evitar los altos gastos de capital y las facturas de los proveedores de servicios tecnológicos. Y a su vez, las empresas tecnológicas deberían de estar preparadas para gestionar la enorme cantidad de datos que se están generando en la nube, almacenándolos de una forma segura, Esto se podría conseguir utilizando nuevos medios, como la AI (Inteligencia Artificial en sus siglas en inglés) o herramientas de aprendizaje automático, por ejemplo. Lo que está claro es que están ante algo inédito en la historia suponiendo un gran reto para todos ellos.