Flat IT budgets and lean IT staffs are making it challenging for organizations to effectively manage a growing number of branch locations. That's why about 60% of businesses rely upon third-party services to serve as an extension of the IT staff.

These third parties handle everything from design and engineering to implementation to training to ongoing monitoring and management. They include carriers, vendors, systems integrators, value-added resellers, and traditional outsourcers.

Some IT decision-makers elect not to use outside management, and some of those are flat-out against it. The former generally has the staff to manage internally, and consequently, they do not see any value in hiring a third party. The latter don’t want to give up control of their network and IT infrastructure, citing bad experience in doing so. “Some stores outsource, but they usually live to regret it,” says a network architect for a large retail chain in Nemertes’ Branch Office Trends research, available this week.

Those who use the services tend to be selective about who provides them, to which locations, and for which services.

In Nemertes’ most recent branch office research, we found that various factors dictate which locations get managed services. Nearly half of the research participants (44%) extend managed services to all branches. Another 29% say the location’s proximity to internal staff is their determining factor. These companies have remote offices with little or no IT staff either at or near the physical site. They don’t need a full-time IT employee on site and may only need help with selected services, for which they can’t justify flying an IT staff member to the location. Consequently, they rely on a third party to augment the IT staff.

Other organizations (18.4%) look at the type of branch office - in terms of applications in use and employee job functions - and let the business needs dictate which services are required. For example, a branch office that operates as a contact center may rely on managed VoIP services to ensure high call quality.

Another factor organizations consider is whether it makes financial sense to outsource. Determining total cost of ownership helped 5.3% of organizations decide which would use managed services.

Robin Gareiss is executive vice president and senior founding partner of Nemertes Research. Click  here for the newsletter archive.