Phil Windley has an interesting post on Why IT doesn't Matter Anymore: Living in the Red Zone. The 'red zone' includes those projects that are both expensive and don't provide any competitive advantage. Things like support, reliability, security, local area networks:

The tough thing about living in the red zone is that its not sexy. Its hard to do and no one's going to come up to you and say "Hey, I noticed the computers didn't go down again! What to go!" Its thankless work and it difficult to convince people to spend much on it. The goal is achieve operational excellence and do it as efficiently (read cheaply) as possible. Focusing on it requires different priorities, a different culture and organizational changes. But "red zone" work is the foundation on which everything else is built and success in other areas of the business is unlikely to come if its ignored.