A recent customer survey by Rackspace Hosting indicates that customer demand for hosting is likely to incrase over the next five years. Nearly 70 percent of customer respondents indicated that the number of IT functions they outsource to hosting, SaaS or cloud service providers should increase over the next five years.
Respondents also revealed that the amount they will spend on hosting is expected to increase over the next five years. 47 percent said they spend between 0 and 20 percent of their IT budget on hosted services, while 30 percent spend 30 - 50 percent. Nearly 50 percent said that they expect the percentage of IT budgets spent on hosted services to increase over the next five years.
The customer survey also revealed that outsourcing IT functions to a hosting provider can save IT managers a significant amount of time. More than 40 percent said that outsourcing their IT functions to a hosting provider saved them from 30-50 percent of their time. Three-fourths of respondents believe that they can spend at least 25 percent more time on new projects because of the time they saved from outsourcing their hosting needs.