The Global Market for IT Solutions in Retail Banking and the Retail Industry can, in our view, recover only when there is a sustained improvement in the wider economy. In the short term, however, we do not yet anticipate a return to the growth rates of previous years. Nevertheless, we do expect investment in the optimization of processes and customer service to continue unabated, especially in the high-end area. In view of tough competition and tight budgets, cost-benefit considerations, above all, are likely to play an even greater role. Against this background, we believe that comprehensive IT solutions comprising hardware, software, services and Professional Services (Glossary) will be increasingly important. In principle, we anticipate a continuation of the heavily differentiated investment behavior of the recent past that is difficult for us to predict. Some investment decisions are now linked more directly to the financial strength and business models of individual companies and cannot be inferred to the same extent from GDP performance in different countries.
Notwithstanding this short-term development caused by changes in the economy as a whole, the long-term trends in both retail banking and the retail industry are unchanged. Given the tough competition they face, both industries have no choice but to continuously review and optimize their customer-related business processes as well as their products. In doing so, they will keep turning to information technology as a source of innovations that allow them to achieve efficiency gains and improve the service they offer to their customers. In the medium term, this will lead to a recovery in this field of business, especially for complete IT solutions, with IT Services playing an important role here. According to a survey conducted by American market research firm Gartner, the global market in IT services should see a return to growth in 2010. Looking forward up to 2013, Gartner predicts continuous spending increases in this area and annual growth of between 4 and 6% (Gartner, IT Spending Forecast; 2Q 2009 update, June 2009).
