“Application testing services” is a comprehensive term for the verification and validation services that support quality control and quality assurance (QA) of clients’ applications. Verification assesses whether a product/application or service complies with regulations, requirements, specifications or enforced constraints. Validation typically involves engagement with external customers to confirm suitability and acceptance. Infrastructure testing services, mobile device testing and software testing tools created for the market by independent software vendors (ISVs) are not included in this definition.
Gartner defines custom software development (CSD) services as those that develop software in rapid increments and iterate custom applications and software products to meet an organization’s unique business needs. CSD services entail gathering business requirements and coding applications from inception, building applications on a platform as a service (PaaS), or assembling applications from existing web services or other reusable pieces of code. Services marketed as “software product engineering” or “digital product development” are likely to be examples of the category Gartner defines as CSD services.
Gartner defines the market for data and analytics (D&A) services as consulting and system integration (C&SI) and managed services. These services manage data for all uses (operational and analytical), and analyze data to drive business processes and improve business outcomes through more effective decision making. The core capabilities for vendor solutions in the D&A services market include: D&A strategy and operating model design Data management Analytics and business intelligence (ABI) Data science and machine learning D&A governance Program management Enterprise metadata
Gartner defines digital experience (DX) services as those services that design, deliver and optimize digital experiences across customer, employee and citizen journeys using technology solutions. The services involve design, solution implementation, content management services, marketing services and ongoing operations. The digital experience solution is delivered through a combination of technologies and services working together to deliver the desired experience outcomes. Digital experience services are focused on creating the optimal user experience, to better sell to, market to, inform and manage the target user (customer, partner, citizen or employee). The services include advisory on what the experience should be, implementation services to create the experience, and operational services to evolve and manage the ongoing experience. These services are not just technical services, but also include creative, content and marketing operations, historically served by digital marketing agencies but now offered by a range of providers, including consulting firms, systems integrators (SIs) and agencies.
Gartner defines IT Services for Communication Service Providers (ITS-CSP) as multivendor IT services CSPs buy to: ■ Enable solutions to their customers, particularly enterprises ■ Transform their customer, partner, workforce, service or infrastructure management IT must deliver a cloud-first, agile, automation- and intelligence-based “digital factory” that can support broader corporate goals of product diversification, innovation, revenue growth and improved digital customer journeys. Geopolitical issues, ecosystems, transparency, trust and security are mission-critical in the uncertain world and add to the factors affecting CSPs’ competitiveness. Communications service providers want to buy and understand business outcomes over technology. They want their IT service partners to have a personal investment. CIOs in large CSPs would like to work with a smaller number of more strategic IT service partners. At the same time, business unit leaders also want to speed up their initiatives, creating possibilities for IT service providers. CSPs want help with revenue growth from enterprises, including joint go-to-market and new digital technology capabilities from IT service providers. Communications service providers expect cost-efficiency from automation, from IT enabling their networks and from using more cloud-delivered software capability. All this is underpinned by the CSP’s desire to run data-focused businesses, including digital key performance indicators (KPIs).
Gartner defines Insight Engines as follows: Insight engines apply relevancy methods to discover, analyze, describe and organize content and data. They enable the interactive or proactive delivery or synthesis of information to people, and data to machines, in the context of their respective business moments. Insight engines should be viewed as platforms on which applications are provided, developed or augmented by applying the capabilities listed above to specific employee and customer experience use cases. Such applications are provided out of the box by vendors (e.g., intranet or site search), developed through technical partnerships (e.g., search within third-party applications), developed with customers in-house (e.g., expert finder), or developed through integration with third-party applications (e.g., extracting data from documents to support RPA).