Do you rent or own your place of living?  Same goes for owning a car, do you lease or did you purchase your automobile?  In the world of technology, another example is to pay for server hosting (rent) or deploy your own internal server (buy).  Many would say that the same "buy versus rent" choice applies to your information technology (IT) support:  when should you hire internal IT staff versus outsource by hiring an external consultant?

Deciding whether to hire or to outsource IT support is based on several considerations--costs, pragmatism, and knowledge or skills, among others.  Both sides of the decision can have far reaching advantages and implications for any establishment--monetary, availability or uptime, and the most important of all, peace of mind.

Hiring IT staff ensures that you have someone at your grasp at all times, someone dedicated 100% to your company.  Of course, this comes at a price.  Generally, hiring full-time IT staff costs more than outsourcing.  And such full-time person is not available 24x7, whereas outsourced persons can be available in shifts.  In-house staff will usually have some downtime.  And their complete abilities may not be fully used and they may be short in certain specific skills.

It is easier to get a variety of skill sets by outsourcing.  It is virtually impossible to hire enough staff to find that range of skills or find one individual who is that multitalented.  Outsourced staff can have greater collective consulting expertise.  Often times, this greater expertise is a result of working with many clients instead of for just one company.  Clients of consultants benefit from what is learned while solving other people's problems.  Education and training are usually on the consultant's own time, not on the hiring firm's, as an outsourced consultant often has more incentive to keep up with technology.

So, what are the implications?  In-house employees require benefits, vacation time, and scheduling / managing.  Costs can add up quickly.

Many feel that outsourcing IT work means having to deal with a different technician every time.  That does not have to be the case and it rarely is.  Usually, consulting firms assign one technician and perhaps even a backup technician to each account.  Thus the familiarity of the environment is maintained as well as the personal relationships.

Lastly, an often overlooked factor is accountability--there is something to be said for paying an outside resource to be responsible for IT.  An outsourced provider will tend to be more attentive to what matters and responsive to a client's needs.  Most of the time, people you hire will do whatever you want to do; people from outside will do what needs to be done.

It's decision time--should you "buy" IT support services from an employee or "rent" from a consultant?