IT outsourcing on the rise and working well

Most manufacturers are looking to outsourcing their IT as part of their cost-cutting measures or simply to bolster what they recognise are inadequate internal IT resources. That’s among key findings of an online survey last month by this journal. It finds the most frequently outsourced aspects of IT are applications and hardware support, followed by network infrastructure support. After that, it’s break/fix and helpdesk, then business continuity and disaster recovery and on down to applications development and security services, with other services barely figuring. Business process development is rarely outsourced and, surprisingly, e-commerce and web support even less so. Integration services and database administration are also well down the list. Of those that have outsourced some or all of their IT, top benefits reported confirm It providers claims. Number one is better IT service to the business (in contrast to non users’ fears), followed by more predictable IT costs and better use of IT professionals’ time as equal second. Reduced overall IT costs come in fourth in the priority ranking. As for why they don’t outsource all of their IT, manufacturers have learned the lesson of the last 20 years. The overwhelming majority say we need to keep some IT competence in house, and the rest say IT is too core to their business. There is still a significant minority expressing concerns over third parties providing services as proactive as their own people – and a similar number worry about specialist applications and hardware that only they know how to support.