Study: within five years, 70 percent of business with outsource IT infrastructure management

The fate of a company's IT infrastructure is a common conversation around the conference room. With more daily operations being backed by technology solutions, the results of these discussions can have wide reaching ramifications. The hardware and software that a company plans to lean on can radically change the systems already in place and alter how IT departments handle the implementation.

An annual white paper from Savvis was released recently and it featured the results of a survey of 550 CIOs, IT directors and decision makers from businesses around the world. The goal of the study was to discover the current and future state of IT and how it is the backbone of many organizations.

The biggest takeaway from the study is how dramatically the landscape is shifting. This can be seen not only in the responses in this survey, but also how the answers compare to the first version of the report that was conducted several years ago.

"Things have changed considerably since our first survey in 2009," the report reads. "The recession lasted longer and cut deeper than many experts predicted. But speed forward four years and our message today is more uplifting, with a focus on innovation and planning for the future — and on a pending radical shift in the IT environment."

IT solution providers becoming key to success

With the technology landscape changing so dramatically, one of the biggest challenges that organizations need to overcome is finding and adopting the skills required to manage innovation successfully. The study found that reliable IT solution providers are becoming a major player because of this.

According to 70 percent of respondents, within the next five years, their infrastructure will be outsourced. Also in this time frame, outsourced cloud computing solutions will become the dominant IT model, surpassing co-location, managed services and in-house owned models.This is being pushed because of backup and recovery solutions, remote work forces and mobile devices that have become standard practices.

The study also found several reasons for increased outsourcing. At the top of the list, cited by 42 percent of respondents, is cost reduction. Other reasons showing up on the list include improved quality of service (36 percent), scalability and flexibility (35 percent), reduced administration time (30 percent) and enhanced security (29 percent).

"The next decade is going to be one of constant change. Organizations will be experimenting with different IT models to find the right mix of in-house, outsourced and cloud (private, outsourced and hybrid cloud models) to best accelerate business growth," the report reads. "But much of enterprises' future plans for outsourcing in general, and outsourcing in the cloud in particular, rest upon finding the right provider."

Becky Carr, the chief marketing office for Savvis, mentioned in the study that businesses are going to want more from their solution providers. A business' success is going to depend on how reliable these providers are and the reliable ones are going to rise to the top.

A quality IT solution provider can become a valuable piece of any business. This helps organizations implement technology solutions across the board and have a partner to lean on and manage them through a growing process.