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The Outsourcing stories that most often make the news are the big company, big outsourcer mega-deals. Even as the mega-deals have given way to mega-multisourced deals, these are the stories we hear the most about. And when these go bad, they get even more attention.

However, the everyday heroes of the outsourcing world are the small and midsized managed services providers (MSP) who support the infrastructure, hosting and integration needs of the thousands of small businesses that are the cornerstone of the economy. Small businesses generally cannot justify the cost of dedicated internal IT resources. Some will have a network administrator to handle the basics, some will just get by as they overwhelm the one person who knows something about desktop configuration or the e-mail server setup. Many need some outside help.

EMA recently conducted a survey of 188 small businesses for a report that will be available in January titled “SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) – Strategies and Priorities.” About 50% were outsourcing some of the their infrastructure or software needs. 41% of those outsourcing were using multiple types of outsourcing including MSPs, Software as a Service, or network services. The most often outsourced function is the Web Services and eCommerce infrastructure. On the rise is outsourcing of accounting and financial software; e-mail hosting; and data backup and recovery services.

I recently spoke to Eddie Spears, a partner at 3T Systems, an MSP with data centers in Denver and Fort Collins, Co. Mr. Spears has seen a trend where small businesses are moving to the midsized outsourcing providers, either moving up from the small three and four person IT support services providers or moving down from the very big MSPs.