When Darius Jackson became ING's head of IT infrastructure support and service delivery in January 2005, his job was to clean up a mess. two years earlier, the financial services company had outsourced its IT infrastructure (hardware, software, help desk and so on) to a major service provider in a seven-year, $US600 million deal. But now the business leaders of the company are worried that they aren't getting the value they want out of the relationship.

As Microsoft executives stood on a Sydney stage to launch Vista and promising business "efficiency at the desktop", my taxi inched down Melbourne's Russell Street, snared by thousands heading to the MCG demanding workers' rights not efficiency, and protesting against WorkChoice. Ironic. Microsoft and I had something in common. We were both late - 15 minutes in my case, two years in theirs. You know my excuse.

Every innovation, every business process improvement, comes with an IT complexity tax that must be paid by CIOs in time, money and sweat. Here are strategies to mitigate the increasing complexity of IT as it enables new business.