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Cloud Computing: Consumerization of IT Feeds 'Shadow IT' Efforts
Shadow IT is the use of IT solutions that have not been approved by, and sometimes not even known about by, an organization’s central IT group. The prevalence of Shadow IT has grown as users have become increasingly technically savvy and as low-cost mobile, web, and cloud technologies become more readily available.
IDC predicts that 90 percent of IT spending growth in 2013 will be in ‘3rd-platform’ technologies (mobile, cloud, social and big data analytics). And while central IT is often involved in making decisions to use and implement 3rd-platform technologies, oftentimes they’re not. It is typically 3rd-platform technologies that are show up on the list of Shadow IT culprits. Gartner estimates that by 2014 35 percent of all enterprise IT spending will be happening outside the corporate IT budget. Similarly PwC estimates that 15 to 30 percent of IT spending is already outside the standard IT department consolidated budget.
While Shadow IT can lead to potential problems in the areas of control, security, reliability and documentation, Shadow IT can also be a source of innovation and a proving ground for new technologies that ultimately become approved standard components of the IT infrastructure.
Andres Rodriguez, CEO of Nasuni, summarized some results from their survey of enterprise users, saying that “Consumer file sharing services and mobile devices have introduced enterprise employees to a new world of powerful, easy to use capabilities. And, …because the enterprise has been very slow to roll out services with a comparable value, their employees are using the same services at work that they use to share photos and documents with their friends. As a result, enterprise IT is rapidly losing control of corporate data.”
Rick Bauer, director of product management at CompTIA, told ComputerWorld’s Julia King that “IT’s role is to enable people to solve problems on the ground. The CIOs and IT organizations that will be winners are those that understand that the game has changed in ways that will never revert back to the way IT was before. Like the church of existentialism, we don’t quite know where we’re going, but we’re on our way.”
