The IT products business is an action packed volatile business, full of churn. Catagoery leaders are trying to usurp the space in other catagoeries by buying out companies. SAP acquired Sybase to get a foothold in database market. Oracle acquired Sun after it exhausted all possible options in software companies. Google in entering the OS space and browser space after success in email and enterprise search. Cisco launched X86 servers and an alliance with EMC/VMWare. HP acquired 3Com to enter in Networking and sewed up an alliance with Microsoft to counter CISCO-EMC alliance. These are the big ones. Then there are countless numbers of small and mid size mergers and acquisitions. The list goes on. The product business seems to be consolidating and it seems like we are going back to the future..
Comparitively the IT Services spaces seems to be moving at a dull and staid space. Yes, there has been action in terms of some services companies being acquired by product companies. HP acquired EDS, Dell acquired Perot Systems, and Xerox acquired ACS. But those were product companies who were acquiring services companies. One has not heard of any bold moves from any other big services companies. Even in the most talked about space of cloud computing, more talk and action is from ISVs and the product companies…The services companies seem to be taking a cautious approach here too…after the last big thing of offshoring, services space seems to be silent for a while now..

What does this mean, if anything?
One could argue that this is not surprising and that Services business is slow and steady business, not given to much twists and turns or upheavels which is more the norm for product busienss.
OR
One could say that this is the lull before the storm…before the next big thing hits the services space…if so…what is the next big thing…and what is the future like for IT services ?

Any thoughts?