New York: Despite fears, the slowdown in the U.S. economy would at best have a moderate impact on the global IT services and BPO industry, according to a global survey of service providers and buyers of IT and BPO services.

The study also found that service providers plan to focus on non-US markets and that the new hot areas are systems integration, infrastructure management and BPO.

Large vendors with multi-shore delivery capabilities like TCS, Wipro, Infosys, Satyam and HCL Technologies will be better equipped to exploit new opportunities in the slowdown period, according to the study published in the forthcoming issue of Global Services magazine from the CyberMedia group.

The study polled 129 outsourcing buyers, of which nearly three-fourths were from the US, and over 200 service providers, two-thirds of which belonged to US companies.

According to the service providers, the economic slowdown in the US would impact profitability and revenues in the short term. As a response, the industry is gearing up with a two-pronged approach of re-aligning existing service areas and increasing focus on non-US markets.

Nearly 75 percent of the service providers said that by adopting this approach, their companies could marginalise the net impact on revenue growth and profitability,

Nearly half of the service providers, primarily representing BPO, infrastructure management and application maintenance, indicated that the slowdown has not impacted the deals pipeline in the current quarter. On the contrary, many of these companies are seeing a stronger deals pipeline and accelerated sign-ups.

However, companies representing the new application development and offshore engagements reported delays, downsizing or renegotiation of contracts.

"The study also included in-depth interviews with analysts from Gartner, TPI, Compass Consulting and The Hackett Group," said Ed Nair, editor, Global Services, in a press release.

Nearly two-thirds of the outsourcing buyers said that their companies will go ahead with the planned projects.

Over a third of the buyers denied there were across-the-board cuts in IT spending, while an equal number admitted that their companies may prioritise the outsourcing of IT projects in the short term.

Almost half of the respondents identified cuts in the contract IT staff, full-time internal hires and IT consulting as the likely areas to get impacted the most in the short-term.

One third of the respondents said that strategic IT initiatives, systems integration, and managed services are likely to be allocated higher budgets.

Arkadiy Dobkin, chief of EPAM Systems, the Russian IT services company with well entrenched delivery capabilities spread from Ukraine to Budapest, said: "We saw a slight slowdown in the first quarter, but we are not sure whether it's the effect of the first quarter or the recession."