Training them to do so is a good use of external resources, and certainly creating an online corporate identity and the design elements to represent it is a good task for specialists. As much as possible, YES . Believe it or not, some IT departments need to be reminded - do not implement your own operating systems, programming languages, web servers, relational database engines, object database engines, and text search engines. Also, outsourcing Internet connectivity is a big YES . There are huge economies of scale in running an ISP, and most securities firms shouldn't try to compete with Internet collocation specialists like Exodus or first-tier ISPs by hosting their own servers and leasing multiple redundant Internet connections.
System administration is another matter, however.
Online service development. Except to get over temporary manpower demand spikes, or for specialized skills, this is your core service. It's a great idea to have a second opinion on features, usability, performance, and scalability. Internal staff are very close to the problem, account executives may not be fluent in the technology, and clients may be more candid with a third party. Of course, it's critical to implement inhouse processes to monitor quality and solicit and apply feedback from clients.