IT /IS Outsourcing from Omani Organizations' Perspective: Motivations and Reservations

Abstract

In recent years outsourcing has become one of the strategies pursued by organizations in order to manage their Information Technology/ Information Systems (IT/IS) (Gonzalez et al., 2006).Organizations turn to outsource their IT/IS for a number of reasons. Many Omani organizations outsourced part or all of their IT/IS while others are conservative and following 'wait and see' strategy.  The aim of this paper is to explore the main motivations for or against outsourcing IS/IT within the Omani private and public sectors. With this aim in mind, a questionnaire survey was used as the main method to collect data from Omani private and public organizations. In addition two semi structured interviews were conducted to detect some issues that were not possible otherwise. The results of the analysis of the data show that the main drive behind IS/IT outsourcing is the need to obtain the required skills which are not available otherwise. The study also shows that security issues and concerns are among the top reasons preventing some Omani organizations from outsourcing.