SMEs turn noses up at web outsourcing

The vast majority of British SMEs prefer to maintain their website and e-business solutions themselves, according to a new study.

The study, by e-business service provider Dragnet, looked at the e-business requirements of 127 SMEs, and revealed that 71 per cent wanted to run their own website and control their own e-business.

It found that a well-designed 30-page website costs about £5,000 to develop, and a further £20,000 to £30,000 per year to employ an in-house webmaster to maintain. SMEs that don't use expensive external developers can save around £25,000 annually.

David Spiby, director of strategy global SMEs solutions at Avaya, told silicon.com that SMEs would rather run their own solution for fear of losing ownership of their product.

Cost and content control are the main worries. They would rather take an integrated offering that they can run in-house - a "package of manageable boundaries and low cost support", according to Spiby.

Most e-business companies that publish information do not need an outsourcing company to deal with their website, according to IT service provider Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

However, as services become more complex it becomes better to outsource part of that service.

Ismail Amla, VP at CSC UK told silicon.com: "As complexity increases, production cost, total cost of ownership and the risk of service performance increases."

Therefore, the cost of keeping it in-house and the cost of guaranteeing the service will be high, according to Amla. "Cost increases, complexity increases," he said.