UK firms' use of MSPs to crescendo, says Claranet

The managed service provider says third parties will manage 22 per cent of UK IT estate by 2020

UK CIOs are planning to outsource an increasing proportion of their IT estate to third-party service providers, a report from Claranet has found.

Currently managed service providers look after 15 per cent of the average UK IT estate, but this is expected to grow to 22 per cent, according to the findings of Claranet's survey of 900 IT decision makers across Europe.

The number of UK businesses who see skills shortages within their IT departments as their biggest challenge is set to drop from 26 per cent to 16 per cent over the next five years, the survey also found.

Claranet said one possible explanation for this is the UK's anticipated increase in the use of third-party providers to support internal IT teams.

But barring Spain, the UK was the only country where survey respondents indicated they felt the skills crisis would get worse.

In France and Germany, for instance, ten and 18 per cent of respondents currently see skills as the biggest IT challenge their organisation faces. But 14 and 21 per cent of French and German respondents, respectively, expect skills to be their biggest challenge in 2020.

For Europe as a whole, the number of businesses that see skills shortages as their biggest IT challenge is expected to rise from 21 per cent to 25 per cent over the next five years.

Andy Wilton, the MSP's chief information officer told CRN that it is not only skills shortages that are concerning businesses, but also the uncertainty of what skills they might need for their business to grow.This emphasises the importance of outsourcing certain duties to third parties which can then take on the responsibility of figuring out what skill sets a business requires, he said.

"What you are trying to avoid is the uncertainty of which technologies to skill up in, when to plan for them, how to retain those staff when you have them and what the lifecycle of certain products and technology is," he said.

"These things are all unknown, and if you are not an IT business then why would you want to incur all that uncertainty when you can outsource that risk and uncertainty to somebody who has got the technology focus to take it on."

IT bosses are struggling to keep up with the evolution and introduction of new technologies, the report went on to say, with innovation being the main casualty in an under-skilled IT department.

Wilton continued: "For a long time businesses, particularly those in the mid-market, have tried to be masters of everything, and manage everything internally. But that kind of approach doesn't make sense any more."Strong use and implementation of MSPs is key to reducing the uncertainty around the skills crisis. Ultimately, this will increase the confidence of mid-sized businesses through shouldering their IT skills risk, allowing for better focus on business growth in the modern world," he concluded.