Pragmatic Dave highlights a new book and comments on it a bit in his "My Job Went Upmarket" posting. To make yourself less of a replaceable coding-cog, he suggests lunch with the business and learning more about the business. Those are great suggestions.
What's more though, you might need to re-evaluate the way you build software as well. It's not just understanding the business, but ensuring that you are delivering what they need. Working more closely with them every day, giving them more visibility into what you're doing, and being more honest with them about things are all just as important if not moreso.
It all boils down to the fact that if you're not delighting your customers, you are going to lose your job, just like in the marketplace. Most IT departments and many developers I've seen make it a point of pride to annoy the business. When the business climate changes and a last minute change is needed to requirements, IT departments delight in making the biz people jump through hoops filling out extra paperwork and looking for every excuse to say no.
You may succeed in "pushing back" this time, but it's not healthy. Next project, you might not still be around. Clearly a poor choice of what to optimize.
Note that agile software development, whatever your criticisms of it, provides excellent protection against outsourcing; it's difficult for a team thousands of miles and several time zones away to be as responsive to the needs of the business as a good agile team, even given people of equal skill.
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