IDC highlights benefits of managed hosting

Small and medium-sized businesses may be better off outsourcing their IT support functions to a specialist third-party, a new report has indicated.

According to a new IDC white paper entitled Saving Money and Energy Through Outsourcing Your Web Hosting, managing IT functions internally may no longer represent the best approach.

IDC reported that despite the significant costs associated with purchasing and maintaining in-house IT, around 50 per cent of firms persist with this traditional model.

"With the rising costs of power and cooling and the growing importance of green IT, is hosting in-house still the right option for a business?" the firm questioned.

Various factors, including affordability, risk, regulatory pressures, environmental concerns and power supply must be considered when firms debate whether to seek the support of server specialists, IDC claimed.

Last month, the firm reported that virtual private servers and related technology accounted for 16.5 per cent of the global server market share during the second quarter of 2009.

This was up from 14.5 per cent in the equivalent three-month period last year.

Written by Tim Dunton