Expensive and time consuming technologies will be discarded in favour of more manageable systems in the immediate future, according to a major organisation's spokesman.

Michael Dean, the group marketing manager at the National Computing Centre (NCC), said that the virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) would be the way forward in regards to network computing in offices for years to come.

He continued: "Traditional fat client technologies are expensive and time consuming to maintain, VDI offers a way for organisations to provide similar levels of functionality and performance but at reduced cost."

The expert added that VDI also offered the user with improved flexibility, such as allowing home-based workers to access their work desktop in a system that has been generally classed by the industry as robust.

According to the International Data Corporation's 2009 report An Economic Pressure Cooker Will Accelerate the IT Industry Transformation, it was asserted that cloud computing would rise in its proliferation due to the current economic crisis.

More than half of small businesses (53 per cent) believe that the most important benefit of outsourcing is guaranteed response times for IT support. London-based Connect conducted the research in 2007.