IT Infrastructure: Businesses Say, 'When in Doubt, Farm it Out'
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. CREDIT: IT infrastructure image via Shutterstock |
'Why buy when you can rent' is a philosophy more and more companies are adopting when it comes to IT infrastructure, a new study shows. More than half of all organizations now look more favorably on outsourced infrastructure than on traditional in-house services. This shift in sentiment from only two years ago marks a coup for outsourcing businesses and cloud solution providers.
In a survey sponsored by Savvis, a cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions provider, three in five IT and business makers agreed that owning and operating in-house IT infrastructure drives up costs and wastes resources.
In 2010, just 38 percent of IT decision makers associated IT ownership with wasted resources and higher costs. Now nearly 60 percent of respondents believe organizations must place the priority on outsourced infrastructure over traditional in-house services, Savvis found.
Savvis surveyed 550 IT and business decision makers in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
[Cloud Computing Seen as Enabler to Businesses, New Survey Finds]
Organizations around the world outsource just over a quarter of their IT infrastructure, the survey found. But in five years, the organizations expect to expand outsourcing to more than 40 percent of their IT services.
Part of the reason is buyer's remorse. More than half of all organizations admit to having IT equipment they now regret purchasing.
Forty-two percent of organizations that do not currently outsource all of their IT are most likely to cite contractual obligations as the main reason for not outsourcing. In 2010 and 2011, the most common inhibitor was company culture.
Cloud computing is the bellwether for the shift to farming out IT infrastructure. Today 85 percent of organizations use private and public clouds for storage, big-data analytics and other applications, up from 39 percent in 2010.
"This study reveals a significant shift in the way organizations analyze and approach IT services," said Bill Fathers, president of Savvis. "IT departments are now looking to strengthen collaboration, efficiency and competitive agility – and they're turning to secure, outsourced environments and cloud computing to help meet their objectives."
Reach BusinessNewsDaily senior writer Ned Smith at nsmith@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @nedbsmith.We're also on Facebook & Google+.