How to Know When to Outsource ITWhen is the right time for an entrepreneurial business to outsource IT management to a remote provider?

Remote Control: Gartner's Eric Goodness.

Photo© Daymon Gardner

This is the sort of question that may not have been worth asking a few years ago, mainly because it was so difficult for small businesses to get on the radar of the large remote IT management providers, which tended to scuffle with one another over the Fortune 500.

"A lot of IT management companies would have said you were too small," says Eric Goodness, research vice president for IT services and outsourcing at technology research firm Gartner. It also might have been too expensive a proposition. "They would have wanted to charge you $500 to $600 per device for remote management," he says.