"There are all types of outcome-based pricing," says Strichman. "Sometimes these models have moderate success. Often they have no success whatsoever."

The most common business outcome tied to IT services deals to date is increased customer satisfaction, says Strichman, but that may encourage the vendor to construct customer surveys that will deliver the desired result.

"The belief is that by tying and pricing to the success of the business, both parties now have their goals in alignment," says Strichman. "But the reality is, alignment is not enough; the vendor must be able to influence a significant portion of the costs which influence the outcome being measured. And the metrics must make sense related to the service. Customer satisfaction may have nothing to do with the vendor."

Contracts focused on desired outcomes at the CIO level have a concrete record of success. With these types of deals, a vendor takes responsibility for "end-to-end" IT service levels. "The vendor is responsible to create an entire system--design, infrastructure, network, programming, maintenance and customer support/help," says Strichman. "These contracts are not uncommon and can work. But even that is really, really hard to do."