Rant HN: Focusing on core competencies or giving away the business

I would like to make an observation about the state of enterprise technology. There has been a buzzword making its rounds in executive offices lately about “focusing on core competencies”. This buzzword is usually code for outsourcing your development and IT. Sabre Holdings, Inc., one of the largest suppliers of airline software outsourced the maintenance of their SET mainframe reservation system to EDS/HP several years ago to focus on “core competencies” and reduce costs. This is a multi hundred million dollar per year revenue stream. Today American Airlines has decided to replace their Sabre provided reservation system with a custom developed system that will be developed by none other than HP.