http://pictures.directnews.co.uk/liveimages/Man+and+woman+looking+at+laptop_1071_18218863_0_0_14724_100.jpg

The market for third-party companies charging to safely dispose of old IT hardware is growing, according to new research from IDC.

Outsourcing SME IT services in this way is motivated both by concerns over data security and the environmental impact of old equipment, with over a third of the firms surveyed saying they'd use an external disposal company.

For small businesses in particular the potential advantages of this are clear. Expert disposal improves a company's environmental record without having to develop in-house expertise on waste management and recycling.

Indeed, with the EU's directive on disposing electrical goods recently being incorporated into British law there is likely to be growing demand for specialists to safely dispose of old PCs and servers.

"The need for a comprehensive IT asset disposal plan (ITAD) is resonating well in the commercial sector where companies are working hard to protect themselves against all sorts of risks, while reducing their own environmental footprint," said David Daoud, personal computing research manager at IDC.

"Over the next two years, IDC believes the ITAD sector will be in a much stronger position to articulate its offerings as companies will be forced by regulation to focus on the proper retirement of their IT assets," he added.

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'