Computer Economics’ “IT Outsourcing Statistics” study for 2015-16 has found that disaster recovery is the most practical and cost-effective IT service for organisations to outsource, more so than desktop support, help desk functions or e-commerce applications.

This result came as something of a surprise, seeing as disaster recovery only ranked as the seventh-best IT function to outsource in 2014. However, this time 92 per cent of enterprises surveyed claimed that, having outsourced this function, the cost remained the same or dropped lower than when it was provided in-house.

“IT organizations outsource disaster recovery primarily to reduce risk rather than save money, and this is what the study has generally shown in the past,” said John Longwell, VP research for Computer Economics.

“We think one reason for the change is the maturation of disaster-recovery-as-a-service. Using on-demand cloud infrastructure for disaster recovery can be cost-effective if you don’t need to maintain the excess capacity.”

Read the full report here.

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Related: Research reveals what steps the UK must take to become a world-leader in outsourcing