Service network analysis of U.S. Information Technology industry

In recent years there is a growing trend in business firms that aims to transform their manufacturing-based business models, processes and practices to service-based ones. This trend is especially important for Information Technology (IT) industry since IT is considered as a major provider of various business services. However, there is little empirical research on the service relationships in the IT industry level. We adopt a network perspective to empirically investigate a financial dataset that contains service-related transactions between 587 IT companies and their major clients. It was found that the constructed customer-supplier network in IT industry shows scale-free network topology. This finding indicates that IT service market is dominated by a few large customers such as U.S. Government and industry leaders. Leading IT companies such as DELL and Microsoft are more of service customers than providers. The results of our descriptive analysis may provide potential research directions for empirical service researchers and practical implications for IT service firms and professions. © 2012 IEEE.