Multisourcing, as a term, was first introduced by the market/technology research firm Gartner in 2005.

Multisourcing, a strategy that treats a given function, such as IT, as a portfolio of activities, some of which should be outsourced and others of which should be performed by internal staff.

This is the more common multisourcing model because one of the main reasons companies choose to change to a multisourcing is because they can control and directly interact with suppliers and not delegate the work to others.

Another major fear that companies have when it comes to using multisourcing is that the customer often cannot state which supplier is ultimately responsible for a given failure, or cannot prove it to a sufficient standard to enable the customer to enforce its rights and remedies under the contract.