Columnists’ corner: “The claim that outsourcing can reduce costs by 60 percent is highly inflated. If you add in professional fees, severance pay, and governance costs, the average savings is closer to 15 percent, TPI says,” Ephraim Schwartz writes in Is extreme outsourcing and consolidation worth it? Of course, everything IT carries unexpected costs, and outsourcing is no exception. But skipping essential training is not a wise way to save money, recounts our Off the Record author. What’s more, a $25,000 service call may or may not have even straightened out the CFO. Best of the blogs: Ed Foster is on the prowl for a good international EULA. “I’ve recently heard from several overseas readers who were eliciting my advise on how their companies could go about creating a EULA that would be as fair and simple as possible.” If you know of one, post remarks on Foster’s blog (via the story link above), or in the comments section below. Quoteworthy: In software, we’re largely coming to take infrastructure for granted, thanks to exceptional middleware from JBoss, databases from PosgreSQL and MySQL, etc. We think, in other words, that 280 (California), I-80 (CA to UT and beyond), I-95 (Massachusetts), M25 (London), and other roads just happen. They’re free, like much of our best software. Infrastructure is FREE! Except that it’s not. — Matt Asay. Infrastructure: You get what you pay for. The news beat: Symantec gets slapped by the IRS with a $1 billion tax ticket for allegedly under-pricing intellectual property it transferred to Irish subsidiaries. Hewlett-Packard expands its IP licensing program. And Siemens is building compliance into Wi-Fi with a management solution that will report on regulatory requirements. Technology Industry