(IRVINE, Calif.) Nearly 62% of all organizations are outsourcing some application development to outside service providers, making it the most popular of nine categories for enterprises and governmental agencies in the U.S. and Canada, according to Computer Economics.
The nine categories of IT outsourcing in the Computer Economics study, in order of popularity, included application development, application maintenance, website/e-commerce, disaster recovery services, data network operations, voice network operations, desktop support, data center operations, and help desk.
The study found that while some companies were expanding the number of outsourced areas, others were bringing functions back in-house. In addition, many enterprises seemed to be adopting a strategy of “partial outsourcing,” whereby they outsourced only a certain level of a particular category.
The full report, The State of IT Outsourcing and Guidelines for Success, investigates the prevalence of IT outsourcing, the change in outsourcing levels, and the priority companies are giving to outsourcing. It also provides six principles for organizations considering the use of outside service providers, based on a recent survey of 200 IT executives and mangers. The study is available at no charge for Computer Economics clients, or it may be purchased by non-clients directly from our website. Additional coverage of IT outsourcing trends and metrics may be found in our annual IT Spending, Staffing, and Technology Trends study, Chapter 5: IT Outsourcing Trends.
Computer Economics is an IT research and advisory firm that provides critical data to enable informed budgetary and technology adoption decisions. The company’s IT Spending, Staffing, and Technology Trends study, published annually since 1990, is the definitive source of IT spending data, staffing benchmarks, technology trends, and related metrics across multiple industries and government sectors.