Market research firm, Gartner said that IT services sector grew 6.7 percent in 2004 -- $607.8 billion in 2004 compared to $596.6 billion in 2003. However, they added that with the US dollar's weakness, actual worldwide growth was only 2.2 percent.

In 2004, IBM was the leading IT services company with 7.6 percent share of the global market. Electronic Data Systems was in second place with 3.4 percent market share. Fujitsu was in third place with 2.8 percent market share. Rounding up the top 6 providers were Accenture, Computer Sciences and Hewlett-Packard with 2.3 percent market share each. Accenture listed the biggest growth among all of them with a 16.4 increase in revenues.

Notably, outsourcing lead to most of these companies' growth last year. Fujitsu received growth from its outsourcing business in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. "Outsourcing was [also] the growth driver for IBM and HP in 2004, while Accenture experienced equivalent increases in both the outsourcing and consulting segments," Kathryn Hale, principal analyst in Gartner's IT services group said.