Beyond the ability to identify and connect business outcomes to IT services delivery, another roadblock on the journey to outcome-based outsourcing is cultural resistance--from both the client and the vendor.

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Customers often are not comfortable ceding the level of day-to-day control necessary to enable the vendor to focus on outcome, rather than service delivery. "Considerable change management is required in the client's mindset during the initial delivery phases," says Karoor.

Handing over the reins requires that the client has enough self-knowledge to be able to create realistic outcome-focused SLAs, not to mention a deep level of trust in its vendor. While Gartner has noted that providers are moving toward output-based pricing models where services support a process with measurable outcomes, buyers for the most part still seek out the safety of traditional outsourcing models. Only more mature clients are beginning to link outsourcing outcomes to business objectives, says Gartner, which "typically involves an evolved pricing model developed after relationships and trust have been established."

Providers may resist business-outcome focused contracts because of the risk they represent. Although moving away from input-based pricing enables vendors to deliver IT services as they see fit, "the vendor assumes much more risk for the relative freedom of choice [it gets] regarding the means for implementation," says Strichman. Indeed, the higher up the outcome on the business value chain, the more risk the provider assumes.