Avnet's Kamins cites another positive aspect of outsourcing. "I will use outsourcing to supplement the workforce, so we don't have cyclical hiring and firing based on the needs of the business at any point in time," he says, noting the company hasn't had an IT layoff in three and a half years.

None of this will work in organizations that lack business-IT alignment -- and there are many, Moore says. "The problem IT has, is most organizations have a jumbled strategic profile because they let each major executive interpret the strategy in his own terms," he says.

Although IT executives can't repair the problem, they are in a good position to discover when it exists, Moore says: They should sit down with major business executives and ask them to outline their strategy and key differentiators. If the IT executive discovers business executives are on divergent vectors of innovation, that's valuable information to bring to the CEO.

Kamins has little patience for IT executives who complain they aren't treated with the proper respect or the company lacks strategic direction. "My answer to that is, 'How many customers have you visited in the last 90 days?'" he says, meaning the company's end customers, not IT's internal customers.

"Why are businesspeople viewing IT as a second-class citizen, as a vehicle for implementation as opposed to a real partner? Probably because you're not bringing them ideas that can help them do their jobs better. If you want to do that, it's all about the customer," he says.

At Cisco, IT staff routinely talk to customers, and not just about how to implement Cisco products, Perry says. "We'll talk about how we do desktop management, how we do change control, anything to help a customer," he says.

When he ran Cisco's global infrastructure group, before taking his current position, "I lobbied for a function within IT that was customer-facing," he says. Now three of his staff of about 40 deal with customers full time and pull in another 80 to 100 Cisco IT personnel worldwide as needed.

Don't be afraid to do some marketing

In many companies, IT may suffer an identity crisis in part because it suffers from an image problem. That in turn often stems from another problem -- a lack of marketing, according to Ken Rau, an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and an independent consultant.

IT staffers tend to be introverts, he says. "The idea of pushing a product doesn't go over too well with them. It's not in their nature." IT should be out in front, reminding users of the services it has delivered and how to use them effectively. But that rarely happens. "IT is forever sitting back and assuming that if they provide these services, these gifts to the users, that they'll be loved. That isn't how it works," Rau says.

The marketing of IT can take many forms, including brown bag lunches where IT helps users with problems, and training to help users get more out of their applications. Rau also suggests forming special-interest groups around certain technologies, such as for BlackBerry users.

IT also should conduct surveys to find out what problems users are having and take steps to correct them -- then let users know what steps were taken. A quarterly newsletter can be effective, combining news of IT projects with informational, educational content on technology.

Bill Miller, manager of desktop services for Nevada County, California, says his group calls users after a help desk ticket is closed to make sure the problem was handled satisfactorily. "That has gained us a huge amount of credibility," Miller says.

His group also conducts one- hour training sessions roughly every other week on topics such as Word, Excel and combating viruses. The sessions are proving successful, playing to packed training rooms. And departments no longer have to pay for the four- to six-hour sessions that outside training companies used to provide.