When shadow IT did occur, it was the purview of super-users who had the blessing of a VP to go around IT and set up the infrastructure and applications the VP needed to produce the results their boss was demanding.
The common thread in both of these c level contact list examples is those engaging in shadow IT were technologically-savvy individuals who had the means and ability to procure, provision, orchestrate, manage, and run their own technology stacks or, at the very least, troubleshoot application issues on their own.
20 years on
Today, that is no longer the case. With the advent of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS the only thing required to go around IT is the will to do it. According to AV firm McAfee and other research, this is particularly true for content collaboration and messaging tools like email, project management, file sharing, and the like. Freemium offerings from most of the cloud SaaS vendors make it all too easy for the average business user to workaround any barrier IT puts in their way.
The common thread between today’s example and those of the past is IT’s ignorance. Then as now, if IT doesn’t know about it, it isn’t unlock the power of experience shadow IT, it’s rogue IT. The difference between the 2 is more than semantics—particularly in light of the surge in COVID-19-driven cloud adoption.
According to Rob Zahn, CIO at AAA of Ohio, what was already changing fast pre-pandemic was IT’s willingness to allow business users to find and use their preferred applications. The pandemic simply accelerated this paradigm shift.
“Let us hear what the project is, trust us,” he said of IT’s role in approving department-level tech projects. “We’ve got so much work on our plate.
The changing IT mindset
There are a lot of reasons for IT’s willingness to embrace cloud-based applications today. For one, IT is perpetually short-staffed and underfunded brazil data relative to the demands placed upon it by digital transformation. Another is cloud providers’ offerings are on par or just as feature rich as their on-prem, client-server cousins. In many cases, SaaS providers have continually set the bar for their particular product category. Salesforce.com comes to mind. Hubspot.com is another.