The once negative image of outsourcing has long disappeared with nearly 34% of businesses outsourcing at least one of their network tasks.
Computer Economics has produced a study showing companies are now outsourcing more of their total IT budgets. The five-year high was hit in 2919 when the amount being spent on outsourcing rose from 9.4% to 12.7%. The research suggests that this is mainly due to small companies as mid to large-sized companies saw less of an increase in the average outsourcing.
A general pattern seems to have developed with regards to outsourcing. The numbers show that while the economy is thriving, fewer businesses choose to outsource.
That being said, between January 2019 to April 2019, the economy grew at a steady pace. Considering that outsourcing didn’t fall, we can say that companies are not as inclined to stick to previous patterns. As new cloud technologies become the norm, companies are now more comfortable leaving their IT tasks in the hands of others.
The same study suggests that the change in the economy wasn’t the principal reason for the rise in outsourcing. It might be the fear of another financial crisis hitting. Rather than waiting for the worst, companies are taking a more active role and preparing themselves for the potential recession.
Last year, 30% of companies outsourced at least one part of their network procedures. This rose to 34% in 2019. On the other hand, 33% of companies chose to outsource application maintenance or at least part of it. This was down from 26% in 2018. Computer Economics predicted that IT organizations are more inclined to focus on serving the business instead of reducing the strain of network infrastructure.
When it came toapplication development, we saw the highest amount of outsourcing at 56%.
The IT budgets for outsourcing in large companies were increased. Previously it was at 6.3% whereas this year it went up to 8.7%. Medium-sized businesses followed the trend by increasing their budgets from 4.7% to 6.5%.
200 people took part in this survey. 48% of those said they had intentions to increase the amount of IT security work they outsource. Contradicting this figure, the percentage of companies that actually outsourced IT security has so far fallen this year.
Interestingly, it’s the smaller IT businesses that have taken to use cloud technology much quicker than their larger competitors. It’s the smaller companies that we should be watching as they are going to be the first to show an increase in outsourcing, whether due to the economy or because they are more comfortable when it comes to trusting others with their IT projects.
This study had been compiled by Computer Economics after it had taken into consideration some of these key areas in IT outsourcing:
- Applicationdevelopment
- Applicationmaintenance
- Datacentre operations
- Databaseadministration
- Desktopsupport
- Disasterrecovery services
- Help deskservices
- IT security
- Networkoperations
- Systemimplementation and integration
- Weboperations
It is safe to say that all areas of IT outsourcing have been thoroughly considered during their investigations.