Cutting costs and improving performance are two of the biggest reason firms look to IT outsourcing, it has been claimed.

A new survey conducted by analyst firm Gartner which found that 48 per cent of IT and outsourcing executives engaged in the practice in order to cut costs.

Only slightly fewer respondents (41 per cent) said they used IT outsourcing as a way to improve business outcomes.

The survey also found that firms who outsource their IT services expect to increase the amount of work they offer to other firms to increase in the coming year with 88 per cent of those asked saying they expected moderate to high levels of outsourcing.

In the last survey only 67 per cent of respondents indicated that they expected this to be the case in 2007.

Last month the IT Governance Institute claimed that a lack of skilled IT workers is creating problems for firms, raising the prospect that some work may have to be outsourced.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent).