Historically, typical outsourced IT services mirrored those considered the remit of the ‘IT department’. These are often grouped in a structured way as ‘IT service towers’ each incorporating, for example, the provision of support services in relation to desktop IT, servers, tech support, application development, network and communications, data centre management, cybersecurity and disaster recovery.
However, reflecting the significance of IT to business generally, Gartner defines IT outsourcing as ‘the use of external service providers to effectively deliver IT-enabled business process, application service and infrastructure solutions for business outcomes’. In this way, IT outsourcing also encompasses aspects of the operation of many business functions (eg the marketing function, the HR function, the accounting function) which are supported by new technologies often delivered by external providers over the internet and leveraged to create the digital transformation that business now seeks.
Furthermore, the nature of business solutions in this area may be piecemeal, combining, for example, internal and external technology services, leveraging infrastructure as a service (IaaS) hyperscalers or integrating legacy databases with modern apps.
Some aspects of IT outsourcing are common to many outsourcing transactions (see: To view the latest version of this document and thousands of others like it, sign-in with LexisNexis or register for a free trial.
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