Small companies will continue to treat emerging IT technologies with caution unless they are convinced they are of benefit to their operations, a new study suggests.

A report by IDC suggests that emerging IT sectors like service oriented architecture (SOA), mobile devices and software as a service (SaaS) will grow in popularity in the future.

However, Monika Kumar, a program manager of IDC's vertical markets program, says that many firms still have to be shown how these options can benefit their operations.

"Companies will continue to proceed with caution as they struggle to distinguish which technologies are products or services versus those that are architectural approaches to IT," she explained.

"Many unique opportunities exist for vendors that are able to articulate the value of these abstract concepts to clients in a way that is meaningful and relevant to a company of their particular size and in their vertical market."

As small businesses begin to embrace more advanced IT services, they could find it useful to outsource some systems to free up their own IT workers.

A recent report suggested that many IT managers at small firms felt they spent too much time dealing with routine problems.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'.