I hate the "everything must be a profit center" MBA attitude. Boeing is a profitable company because they make machines that fly people from place to place safely and efficiently. Part of that is having training, support, service, replacement parts, sales, manufacturing, IT, R&D, and all the other things required to make things fly.
It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead they've spent a lot of it! Let's downsize, outsource, and make our own divisions pay for IT, we'll see whether we're successful by measuring the IT department's profit next quarter." Inevitably, that department makes more money under that regime, but the company is worse at flying people from place to place.
If you're a hardware company, the software should be free. The support should be effective. You should be hosting training events at nice facilities with free pizza because people who know how to use your hardware will buy more of it. If I have to pay for your software, I'm going to be pressured to buy the Light version instead of Enterprise, and I'm going to pay for only one training class and not learn about your next iteration, and you will sell less hardware.
It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead they've spent a lot of it! Let's downsize, outsource, and make our own divisions pay for IT, we'll see whether we're successful by measuring the IT department's profit next quarter." Inevitably, that department makes more money under that regime, but the company is worse at flying people from place to place.
If you're a hardware company, the software should be free. The support should be effective. You should be hosting training events at nice facilities with free pizza because people who know how to use your hardware will buy more of it. If I have to pay for your software, I'm going to be pressured to buy the Light version instead of Enterprise, and I'm going to pay for only one training class and not learn about your next iteration, and you will sell less hardware.