Information technology consulting
Information technology consulting (IT consulting or business and technology services) is a field that focuses on advising businesses on how best to use information technology to meet their business objectives. In addition to providing advice, IT consultancies often implement, deploy, and administer IT systems on businesses' behalf.
The IT consulting industry can be viewed as a three-tier system:
- Professional services firms which maintain large professional workforces and command high bill rates. These firms are increasingly sourcing their employees from low-cost nations.
- Staffing firms, which place technologists in businesses on a temporary basis. These firms are pejoratively known as "body shops". While they are geographically limited by their customers, they can exploit global cost differences by bringing guest workers to their host country. Body Shops are typically distinguished from Consultancies by their commercial practice of pricing service by the day (the input), rather than by the results of their work (the outputs, or deliverables).
- Independent consultants, who function as contractors (also known as "1099"), employees of staffing firms (also known as "W-2"), or as subcontractors in their own right (also known as "Corp-to-corp").
There is a relatively unclear line between management consulting and IT consulting. There are sometimes overlaps between the two fields, but IT consultants often have degrees in computer science, electronics, technology or management of information systems while management consultants often have degrees in accounting, economics, finance or a generalized MBA (Masters in Business Administration).
List of IT consulting firms
The following is a list of the largest IT consulting firms in the world by number of consultants. For some companies, their number of consultants will not be equal to their number of employees; the headcounts below are intended to reflect entire workforce.
North America
- Accenture (New York, NY) (130,000)
- Avanade (Seattle, WA) (3,000)
- Affiliated Computer Services (Dallas, TX) (40,000)
- BearingPoint (McLean, VA) (16,000)
- Booz Allen Hamilton (McLean, VA) (16,000)
- CGI Group (Montreal, Canada) (25,000)
- Computer Sciences Corporation (El Segundo, CA) (79,000)
- Deloitte Consulting LLP (New York, NY) (12,000)
- Electronic Data Systems (Plano, TX) (132,000)
- Hitachi Consulting (Dallas, TX) (1000)
- HP Technology Solutions (Palo Alto, CA) (65,000)
- IBM Global Services (Somers, NY) (175,000)
- SAIC (San Diego, CA) (43,000)
- The Titan Corporation (San Diego, CA) (12,000)
- Unisys (Blue Bell, PA) (37,000)
- Cognizant Technology Solutions (Teaneck, NJ, NJ) (30,000)
- Softtek (San Pedro Garza García, NL, México) (4,000)
Asia
- HCL Technologies (Delhi, India) (30,000)
- Infosys Technologies Ltd. (Bangalore, India) (52,000+)
- Satyam Computer Services (Hyderabad, India) (30,000+)
- Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (Mumbai, India)(70,000+)
- Wipro Ltd. (Bangalore, India) (50,000+)
Europe
- Atos Origin (Hoofddorp, Netherlands) (47,000)
- Capgemini (Paris, France) (60,000)
- Everis (Madrid, Spain) (former DMR Consulting)
- Getronics (Amsterdam, Netherlands) (28,000)
- Ikonami (London, UK) (35)
- Indra (Madrid, Spain)
- LogicaCMG (London, UK) (30,000)
- PA Consulting Group ((London, UK) (3,050)
- Pentalog (Orléans, France) (70)
- Vincles (Barcelona, Spain)
Defunct but notable
See also
- Category:Management consulting firms
- Outsourcing, delegation of internal non-core operations to external entity
External links
- IT consultation in close-up, general job description
- Washington Technology Top 100