Chargeback - I was reading an article that asked the question: "Does IT chargeback pave the way to outsourcing?" A good question that misses some points . . .

The article written by Linda Tucci introduces a "supply/demand" model for businesses as an tool. In this model description the Demand side is aligned with the Business community and the Supply side is entrusted with role of supporting the technology.  As pointed out in the article, this does provide opportunity for the Supply side to be considered a commodity - IT IS THAT FACT THAT PAVES THE WAY TO OUTSOURCING !!!

Over simplifying the tasks and skills required to run an effective IT organization is a great dis-service.
The alleged Supply side is responsible for incorporating and maintaining all of the required hardware and software. In addition, this group must plan for Disaster Recovery. Certainly within the vast field of details regarding these activities some are very appropriate to outsource in some form.  For example, email is one of the easiest Organization business applications that can be pushed into the cloud. Reducing the Staff requirements to support dramatically.

The segmentation of the IT workload into the Supply/Demand model does lend itself to making the support requirements for a system appear to be simple. Certainly there are main "CoreTech" tasks that are ripe to be outsourced where fractionalized labor provides low cost points. Some of these tasks are Installs, Patching, Backup and Recovery.  These tasks by their inherent execution are very repeatable. Do one, and you can likely do any. The Supply/Demand model tends to identify those tasks deemed Generic and Simple as being able to be offloaded.  Not a bad initial model depending on the details.