Indeed - people forget that outside of the software industry itself, software and IT is usually viewed by the business as a cost.

It is a cost. Many IT people/developers like to think otherwise but to do so is truly delusional and can be a roadblock to career advancement.

It may be delusional to not deal with the software is viewed. But the thought that it's strictly a cost is itself a delusion. I have seen firsthand corporations being choked by bad software. (A certain cell phone manufacturer and a certain car rental company come to mind.) I've also experienced good customer service enabled by flexible software, where I'm amazed, "You can really do that?"

Amazon wouldn't be nearly as good as it is if it wasn't for the degree of software quality that they have.

I understand your point and I agree that software could make or break a company. That can be true and you could still make the argument that IT is strictly a cost. That IT departments can enable other departments to reduce their own costs does not change the fact that IT itself is a cost.

In your customer service example IT has clearly had a positive impact, but you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that the IT department is generating revenue for the company. If you walked into the CFO's office trying to make that case you'd be laughed out of the room. Good customer service does not manifest itself through good software.

A better approach may be to walk into the CFO's office and show how your IT department is helping the company realize it's goal of providing good customer service at an acceptable cost. It's a very subtle distinction. This is what I was getting at when I said not thinking of IT as a cost can be a roadblock to advancement.

If IT is only a cost, and not a competitive advantage, then your company doesn't need IT in house and should outsource entirely.

Being considered a cost and providing a competitive advantage are not mutually exclusive. An IT department that meets its goals at a lower cost than an alternative could be a competitive advantage.

An example of an IT department that's a revenue-generator is Amazon's, in the sense that they sell services outside of the company. But that's quite rare. At most, some IT departments chargeback internally, but that's just made-up money.

Then again, I think it was Bezos himself who described Amazon as a technology company that happened to sell books too.

I'm going to disagree. Based on experience, this is still the root of the problem: "Secondly, support for Microsoft.NET is a secondary goal for Mono"

Maybe Mono is great for smaller agile shops who can somehow work around that (most likely since they don't have a lot of legacy code - or they can start from scratch), but at the big corp I work for it just doesn't work. Many of our teams couldnt get our major projects running without major issues on mono without significant work (which wasn't undertaken).