Why shadow IT is a business best practice.
James McGovern
Chief Architect | Principal Architect | ex-Gartner Analyst | Military Veteran (USCG)
Ever watch the facial expression of a CIO upon learning the business has developed an application and didn't even bother to run it past IT? If Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is the poster child of anyone other than IT choosing technology going forward, I think IT will be shocked when this mindset extends to wearables, SaaS and even every day corporate compute devices.
Can we stop worrying about the number of direct reports, the lack of compliance to our reference architectures and other sage practices and instead start focusing on the people and giving credit were it is due? If intellectual honesty is in order, we can admit that many of those Shadow IT solutions work better than the official IT ones—boosting productivity and employee satisfaction. Perhaps more importantly, they raise the bar for official IT products and services, making things better across the board.
As IT employees, we need to stop being an impediment to the business and start being an enabler. I am hopeful that in 2015, many IT executives will focus more on enabling better business outcomes.
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9yI don't mean to pile on James, but to extend Bernie's point: Imagine an enterprise-system vendor that acquires another such vendor, thereby taking on all of the attendant challenges of technology/platform integration — to say nothing of customer integration and retention. Shadow IT in a situation like that would be a chaotic recipe for disaster, no?
Data, Systems, Cloud, Strategy
9yIn today's XaaS world, IT is often playing the role of broker/integrator of myriad services across the enterprise. IT may not even be creating the apps, but rather reviewing the apps/services for sound security and risk management concerns. Shadow IT evades that scrutiny and possibly leaves doors open in what is otherwise a fairly tightly run ship. As you and I both know, Obscurity is not security, so your last note on security needs some rethinking. I do agree with the notion that IT needs to be available for joint ventures. But I guess I would argue that this is a two way street. I cannot count the number of times I've seen IT sitting at a table ready for collaboration, only to be left in the room alone with a poorly crafted requirements list.
Data, Systems, Cloud, Strategy
9yI often align with your view James, but on this one we part ways. Shadow IT without an enterprise perspective is a recipe for disaster. Siloes kicking up their homebrew solutions to immediate problems without sufficient insight into real-world ramifications of security, risk, etc... is a cause for concern. There is a middle road of enablement and joint venture than needs to be embraced.
Some solutions are great ideas, some expose the business to security risks and other kinds of data risks. Perhaps CIOs and IT in general have become too risk adverse. But, with laws that make CIOs personally liable in some situations, one can hardly blame them for a conservative stance. So, what rapid-fire, sand-box like solutions can HP offer to CIOs that will get this monkey off their backs?