IT outsourcing providers can take full responsibility for all IT maintenance and support, this is called a fully managed service, or they can provide additional support for an internal IT team, this is sometimes referred to as co-sourced IT support and is usually an approach taken by larger organisations.
A company may use one provider for all their IT requirements, or multiple service providers to deliver different elements.
Types of IT outsourcing:
Offshore outsourcing
This involves sending IT-related work to a company in a foreign country, such as India, China or the Philippines, which offers political stability, lower costs and tax savings.
Nearshore outsourcing
The process of sending IT-related work to a company in a country which shares a border with your own. Theoretically, this should make travel and communication between the two companies easier.
Onshore or domestic outsourcing
This involves contracting an external service provider, located in the same country as you, to provide IT-related work, remotely or on-site.
Cloud computing
Contracting an external service provider to provide IT-related services over the internet, such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service.
Managed services
This involves contracting an external company to provide network management functions such as IP telephony, messaging and call centres, virtual private networks (VPNs), firewalls and networking monitoring and reporting.
