8. Outsourcing helps companies stretch their IT budgets.

Many companies will freeze new IT initiatives for the next three to six months as they absorb the Wall Street crash. But one segment that's likely to continue is IT outsourcing because it provides near-term cost reductions.

"While IT outsourcing will benefit from an economic slowdown in 2008 as companies turn to IT outsourcing vendors to help cut costs, trends toward use of lower-cost offshore resources and smaller-scale outsourcing deals will keep growth modest," Forrester Research. 

Forrester predicts IT outsourcing will grow around 5% in 2009 and 2010.

"When you sign an outsourcing agreement, you're locked into it barring going out of business," Forrester's Bartels says. "Outsourcing revenues are not going to be variable."