Increased outsourcing, include networking infrastructures, will
likely form a key trend for 2009 as companies
react to mounting downward financial pressure caused by the
economic downturn.
This trend forms part of a recent report by Forrester Research
which has revealed
the true extent
as to the toll the economic downturn is having on IT
departments and their budgets in particular.
Forrester says that as a result of the downturn, 43% of firms
have already increased their use of infrastructure outsourcing. A
similar number said that they would move more work offshore.
Infrastructure outsourcing expects to grow with
convergent telecommunications and network management likely to
be a hot area of growth as 20% of firms outsourcing this service in
2008.
From the research, few firms have fully tapped into
offshore resources, with just less than a tenth of
firms currently using offshore resources wherever and whenever
possible. Given a need to cut costs, 14% of firms confirmed they
will increase their usage of offshored services with a fifth
actively piloting offshored services. Even though 22% of firms are
not using currently offshored service, they are actively tracking
developments.
However, the survey also revealed that firms were aware of the
downsides of offshoring. Of those firms not sending work offshore,
a majority cited the questionable quality of the work done and
.even though firms using a third party were overall satisfied with
their decision to, 52% said that their biggest challenge with
existing IT services and outsourcing relationships was that cost
savings were lower than expected.
In a sharp reminder to the vendor community, other stand-out
challenges included inconsistent or poor service quality (40%) and
the inability of the vendor or contract structure to respond
rapidly to changing business needs (35%).