Shadow IT: It’s Here. Deal With It.
Another week, another cloud. But not just any cloud. This week’s cloud is serving the “dirty little secret” Jill Dyche referred to in her incredibly insightful article for the Harvard Business Review a few weeks back. And what is that dirty little secret? Shadow IT.
From Skype to Gmail, USB sticks to Google Docs – if you’ve not put your hand in the proverbial pot and cheated on your corporate IT then you’re in the minority. Scrap that. You’re probably on your own.
Indeed, reading the latest estimates by PwC, it would seem that anywhere between 15 to 30 percent of IT spending now occurs “outside the standard consolidated budget of the IT department”. But instead of worrying about its prevalence, should CIOs stop playing ‘whack-an-app’ and focus their efforts on inducing a more inclusive approach?
Speaking with Chris Dickson, VP for Enterprise Management Sales at CA Technologies – and a man exceptionally well-versed in navigating agile solutions – it would seem that the answer is a resounding yes.
Below is Dyche’s chart characterising the four types of IT effort that offer a glimpse into how the majority of organisations view their activities:
Naturally, it’s difficult for CIOs to manage costs when they don’t have complete ownership of cost (after all, cloud solutions can be sold on a function basis rather than at the IT level) – but according to Dickson, if CIOs come at the cloud from a different perspective, they could end up shaking hands with their shadowy foes and turn adversity into advantage for the greater corporate good. And if the question is how, then you’ve just found some answers:
“I think the CIO who manages that situation well is the one who welcomes it and embraces it as an opportunity,” explains Dickson. “If they resist, if they push back and say ‘I can do all of that. Why don’t we spin a project to build this system or why don’t I go in and investigate a system,’ then that slows things down.”
Instead, by embracing opportunities presented by the business, CIOs embrace the business further – partnering with, and becoming more relevant to it. From this, the business is far more likely to listen to concerns raised by its CIO and ask whether the right services are being used. Sniffing out shadow IT then becomes more of a case of putting it front and centre to see what it’s offering that the business currently isn’t.
As Dickson also points out, shadow IT is happening for a reason. The business can always go and get these services easier, cheaper and from outside their cloud. If the CIO can embrace that “cloud-like” approach, then they can become a service provider to the business. The bottom line: (em)brace for impact, because you’re going to get hit harder if you don’t.
“We have a strategy that we talk about within IT management around acceleration, transformation and security,” continues Dickson. “A CIO who is able to transform his business and become more of a service provider instantly becomes more agile.”
And what happens when a CIO pulls off a Clark Kent, phone-box style whip-around into an agile executive? Well, bar partnering with the business on a more intimate level – and thus accelerating it – an agile CIO evolves IT from a cost centre to a business driver, and in the process becomes an accelerator to market.
Moreover, by making IT both a differentiator and a competitive worker, the CIO becomes the revenue point for the business. Pace to market, revenue drivers and assessing the right services quicker then all play their part in providing an exponentially differentiated position for the CIO, and work better for the business as a whole. Can everybody say win-win?
There’s no denying that every tech rollout is different, but as Dickson sees it, ROI is very past tense; the metrics of today belong to time and value. “I think time to time and time to value – or time to profit – is something business is moving towards. We’re becoming more service-centric in our consumption. As far as ‘time to profitability’ is concerned, CIOs should be asking, ‘how soon can I expect a service to make money?’
“Obviously, we manage the cost aspects and look at how we’re maximising resources being used and minimising expenses – but an better way is to look at cloud and its effects as time to value,” unveils Dickson.
Of course, the cloud is extremely powerful if it’s understood correctly and nestled in closer under the CIO wing. But if you think that going to the cloud is instantly cheaper and offers you more services at the click of your fingers – then the chances are there’s a company out there that going to make a lot of money off the back of you. All it takes is to spin a service once, and all of a sudden that company is serving a multitude of users.
The flip side? The cloud brings a flexible model of consumption – and there’s no denying that time to value is inextricable tied in with that. Leverage this, and shadow IT can easily become an incorporated player. Ultimately, it’s time to look forward for metrics rather than look back.
What are your thoughts? Are you seeing something different with your cloud services and shadow IT issues? Drop by in the comments and let us know…
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Author: Nick Pryke
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