"Follow our 12 step program and break free from professional services codependency" says the cover of InfoWorld.
My initial reaction was "here we go throwing the baby with the bathwater". Variable staff sourcing - employees, contractors, systems integrators, offshore firms, etc are part of every company's talent strategy. Lord knows I am hard on IBM, Accenture, Infosys and others on this blog but the virtuosos I know keep pushing the envelope with SaaS, utility models, leveraging communities - not going out and hiring more full-time employees.
The article, though, is far more benign than the cover page. Fairly blase recommendations like "Hire only the expertise you need" "Don't use a consulting firm to do day to day tasks". (My question to last point is why not? Let them do the mundane utility stuff if the price is right - save your employees for the innovation stuff)
It is a sad commentary on the image of the services market though that a major IT publication runs a cover story on the topic and calls it an addiction.