How do you outsource you elearning development?

There seems to be an emerging trend over the past couple of years for corporates to buy in specific expertise rather than purchase an entire elearning project. In part this has appears to have been driven by the growth of generic publishing tools. But there also seems to be much more significant re-evaluation of where vendors add value, almost on a project by project basis.

This fragmentation which coincided with the growth of Rapid elearning also suggests some interesting new potential. Will we see the growth of syndicates of development specialists dealing directly with corporates rather than operating through a standard elearning vendor? These hubs of expertise already work on a contract basis for many of the established vendors... so why have the middle man?