Most companies that are not hard tech companies consider IT an expense.

I work for a financial company as a software developer and we are considered an expense. There has been a big push to just buy commercial software instead of building anything in-house, even if that means we have to customize it or build something on top of it. The use of outsourcing has dramatically increased over the years, including outsourcing an entire line of business. They will raise expectations and erode benefits in an effort to keep your costs more comparable to the cost of outsourcing.