India’s top six offshore service providers, jointly known as the ‘SWITCH’ companies, comprising of- Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Cognizant and HCL Technologies have collectively and individually surmounted the IT market. According to a report published by Gartner, these six companies together accounted for 2.4 percent of the total worldwide IT services market in 2007.

“With such strong growth rates that exceed the overall market, the India-based IT services providers are increasing in their competitiveness and taking market share away from the rest of the market,” said Mr. Arup Roy, senior research analyst, Gartner.

In 2007, the SWITCH companies comprised of 36 percent of the U.S. IT services market, as against 2.8 percent in 2006 and expanded its Western European revenue 51 percent in 2007, almost four times the total market. In 2007 the group accounted for 1.9 percent of the Western European IT services market, compared to 1.5 percent in 2006, revealed the report.

According to Gartner, the coming twelve months will be challenging for this group of India- based providers, as the gap between themselves and the traditional service providers in terms of global delivery competencies and multi country delivery sites has tapered.