IT outsourcing is becoming more popular among businesses as it allows firms to retain their existing hardware, an expert asserts.

Rob Lovell, ThinkGrid’s chief executive officer, claims the advent of cloud computing and software-as-a-service will lead to an increase of this trend.

He asserts that that virtualisation will lead to servers primarily being bought by large corporations, with small and medium-sized enterprises IT outsourcing these capabilities and saving money.

“People don’t need to buy the stuff. They don’t need to buy the servers; they don’t need to pay [for] the PCs, they can get everything over the web,” he asserts.

Mr Lovell states that there will be an increase in the number of datacentres being used, a trend which has been exacerbated by the economic downturn.

Research by Gartner recently revealed that PC shipments will fall to 257 million units next year, down 11.9 per cent on 2008.

He asserts that this is the worst decline since 2001, when unit shipments contracted 3.2 per cent.