Skills Survey 2006: Thumbs-up for in-sourcing

When outsourced IT projects don't live up to expectations, what's the best course of action?

We continue to see headlines of companies 'in-sourcing' - bringing outsourced IT projects back in-house - the most recent being Boots which said last week it is moving 100 IT jobs in-house as part of a revised outsourcing contract with IBM.

According to silicon.com's exclusive 2006 Skills Survey, in-sourcing is a good way to solve a bad outsourcing relationship. More than two-thirds of respondents agreed with this approach, compared to just 15 per cent who did not.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, of all the job titles surveyed, IT pros are most in favour of in-sourcing, with 77 per cent saying this is a good way to handle failed outsourcing efforts - no doubt as it tends to be those respondents whose jobs would most often be affected by both outsourcing and in-sourcing.

CIOs and IT directors are next in terms of their support for in-sourcing, with 74 per cent in favour of the practice. IT consultants followed with 63 per cent support.

Meanwhile board directors and other C-level execs, such as CEOs, were least enthusiastic about in-sourcing with just over half of respondents saying they believe it's a good way to solve a bad relationship - perhaps because they are the ones who must answer to stockholders for why the deal went wrong in the first place.

The results are based on responses from 1,198 individuals.

Read more Skills Survey results:

• IT salaries dip
• IT pros fear offshoring, CIOs don't
• Business skills key to success in IT

We will be bringing you more results from the silicon.com 2006 Skills Survey over the coming days and weeks.