Small businesses in IT may be in an increasingly comfortable position, if new statistics from a major international body are to be believed.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) revealed that it may have detected several signs that the global slump for the IT sector may have reached its bottom, with a number of indicators implying improvement in the medium to long term.

According to its data presented in The Impact of the Crisis on ICTs and their Role in the Recovery, it was discovered that cost-cutting measures had allowed many to bounce back much quicker than many expected, though confidence still remains fragile overall.

The report explained: "There are signs of recovery, with the rate of decline bottoming out and turning up in the most recent cyclical data."

The OECD was established in 1961 in Paris and has a membership of 30 countries and a budget of €303 million (£258 million).

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.