In the highly fragmented Indian market for IT services, IBM grabbed the biggest market share for the second straight year as Indian CIOs are requiring outsourcing partners to offer end-to-end services and deep domain expertise and are putting less emphasis on low prices.A report from Springboard Research said IBM's 2008 market share was 10.8%, Wipro's 8.7%, and Tata's 6.1%; for 2007, the figures were IBM at 9.9%, Wipro 7.1%, and Tata 6.1%. Noting the 2008 revenue total for Indian IT services reached $4.8 billion, the research firm said CIOs in India turned up the heat on outsourcers in the past year:

"Indian CIOs are becoming as demanding as their global counterparts by insisting on annual renewal of contracts and stringent SLAs," said Phil Hassey, vice president of Services Research at Springboard Research. "Therefore, the key factors for IT services vendors to be successful here are domain knowledge and client interaction capabilities rather than price of the services provided," Mr. Hassey added.

In addition, Indian CIOs also are requiring that IT services vendors adapt their behavior to put greater focus on business insights and counsel that those customers can translate into competitive advantage, the research firm said.