US$37.5 billion of long running IT contracts are to expire in the next six months, says technology analyst Ovum.

According to Ovum's ICT Opportunity Profiler tool, which forecasts ICT spend by type, location, sector and company, the biggest opportunities will come in the financial services, energy and utilities and communications industries followed by government and not-for-profit; aerospace and defence and life sciences.

Ian Charlesworth, Research Director at Ovum, said, “In the face of ever-increasing competition and continued cost-cutting as a result of the global economic slowdown, business development teams must work as efficiently as possible. Those that focus resources on contracts they know are coming up, take the time to understand their customers' sector and carefully target their approach will be the winners in the long term.

The research covered 20 business sectors and found that over 500 IT contracts are due to expire before September 2010.

Charlesworth added, “With hundreds of contracts ranging in value from $1 million to $1billion potentially coming onto the market in the next few months, business development teams can quickly gain competitive advantage in a difficult market by knowing who is going to be spending and why."