By Simon Quicke

10 October 2008

Analysts at Forrester Research have started to gather anecdotal evidence that indicates the credit crunch is hitting IT service specialists.

The analyst house has found that service providers have noted some orders are being cancelled by some customers and in other cases sign off for projects being delayed.

"Clients are deferring project decisions, consolidating their vendor relationships, and starting to renegotiate prices with their existing providers,” said Forrester principal analyst Pascal Matzke.

The Forrester findings, which are in a report: IT service providers start to see effects of the credit crunch, will add to a growing heap of evidence that backs up channel experiences of project delays and delayed roll-out of IT purchases.

Another consequence of the downturn is that several companies told Forrester that they had been hoping to increase prices this year to claw back some margins but now no longer had the option.

At a vendor level SAP reported earlier this week that its orders had taken a hit and resellers have already indicated to MicroScope that they are starting to see a change in the behaviour of customers.