Phoenix IT Group's long-serving chief exec Nick Robinson is hanging up his boots today after attending his last Annual General Meeting in the role.

The services provider and reseller is handing captaincy of the ship over to industry veteran Dave Courtley at the beginning of next week. Courtley will need to draw upon his experience to beef up sales and offset a drop in large-scale outsourcing deals.

In a trading update for Q1 ended 30 June, Phoenix said numbers were "in line with management expectations" and the outlook for fiscal 2012 – heavily weighted towards the second half – remained unchanged.

The market dynamics apparent last year had continued with smaller, shorter-term outsourcing contracts favoured by enterprises.

"Currently there is a paucity of large outsourcing deals in the UK IT services market, but the group continues to see new opportunities and develop its pipeline," it said.

The order book exited Q1 at £325m, down 1 per cent sequentially, while contract values dipped 3 per cent on the March quarter to £194m.

Phoenix restructured during fiscal 2011, merging its business continuity ICM unit with the mid-market services arm Servo, which had constrained profits at those divisions. ®