Outsourced services continue to show solid growth as customers convert capital to operating expense in an effort to move more quickly while reducing costs. Application migration and rationalization services continue to grow and this is a market where the savings can be substantial. CIOs are finally getting religion about moving to contemporary platforms and dramatically reducing the number of applications and suppliers in their technology portfolio.

Cloud and "as a service" software and IT offerings expand every day in this market. There was tremendous interest in storage as a service offerings, especially for archival data. Private cloud is gaining mindshare as the right architecture behind the firewall, and many large providers are considering outsourcing as suppliers prove their capabilities. Private HIE as an integration solution will continue to fuel private cloud adoption among large providers. Ambulatory EMR also showed substantial growth year over year, principally through "as a service" delivery.

We continue to collect our thoughts and internally discuss and debate the implications of this year's HIMSS event. Look for additional comments and opinions on this event over the next several weeks.

As always, we encourage our research customers to schedule time with us to discuss their specific questions from this year's HIMSS event.