Is your firm facing a gnarly IT issue?  Such as securing client extranets, authenticating (virtual and real) visitors to privileged document repositories or firm financial and competitive information?

Chances are that ways of dealing with the challenge you're facing is a question that has been "asked and answered" in circumstances at least as demanding as you face.  Question:  What is The Single Most Demanding "Security" challenge today?  Homeland security, of course.  This fascinating Baseline Magazine article, taking off from the premise of what Tom Ridge could learn from Las Vegas casinos, teaches, if nothing else, that the not-invented-here syndrome should be permanently laid to rest.

And that somebody else has probably solved the functional equivalent of your problem on a scale at least as daunting. 

Moral of the story?  Stretch your imagination to envision industries or markets where the same problem you're facing is a threat to their existence, and explore how they have engineered their own survival in the face of it.