Why would you think a replacement for meat would be healthy when the replacements for butter (margarine) and natural fats (transfer fats) turned out to be even less healthful?

100% agreed. It's about the results and the relationships. You need both to be successful long-term.

Agreed. There will be a movement over the next 10 years to locate software development in "the business". "Corporate IT" as you describe it will administer the infrastructure and operate the environment. They will also set common standards to ensure consistent architecture and best practices across the enterprise.

We'll be making progress when the CIO is viewed as essential to the organization as the head of facilities.

Good examples and your points are valid - especially the last paragraph, which I think is IT's responsibility whether they are dealing with a customer or a colleague. Frankly, I'd be thrilled if the internal people at most companies were held to standards you're holding paying customers to.

As a manager in a service desk, I always have to remind everyone that the metrics are the start of the conversation, not the end of it. It's easy for people to substitute the number for the reason why you measure the number, and as soon as that happens, stupidity isn't far behind. All numbers can be gamed, so it ultimately comes down to someone actually paying attention to how well IT is serving the needs of the business as judged by the key decision makers in the business.

The fact that most people substitute "help desk measurements" for "IT measurements" freely in their minds is a sad commentary on the state of IT/business relations. IT should be doing a lot more than resetting passwords and replacing keyboards - they should be helping the business develop products and services that lead to success for the company.

You make many excellent points, yet I have to strongly disagree with this statement:

"everyone in the company is treated like a customer"

Unless you provide IT services to someone outside of your company, you're not working with customers, you're working with colleagues (simple test - how much is the person you're talking to paying for service?) This is a very different dynamic as a customer has less responsibility than a coworker - other people in your company have to follow policies and adhere to guidelines that customers don't. There's no real difference between someone asking for a new computer when their current system is perfectly fine and someone asking HR for an equal amount of money, yet the second request gets laughed out of the building. The real customer is the person who can make the decision whether to outsource IT or not.

Fixing this perception would get us a long way towards a better relationship between IT and non-IT parts of the business.

Now THAT is a great show title. Somebody get the Robot Chicken guys working on this...