According to a new survey conducted by research and advisory firm Computer Economics, application hosting has replaced application development as the most frequently outsourced IT function. The number of companies that outsource their application hosting increased by 10 percent since last year, and 57 percent of companies that currently outsource application hosting plan to increase their use of such services. Much of the growth is due to the popularity of cloud computing, particularly software as a service (SaaS) offerings.
Overall, IT outsourcing declined this year, reversing a four-year trend. At the same time, IT budgets are increasing.