Comments on: Celebration of Shadow IT

By: Russ Aebig

Russ Aebig — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:34:46 +0000

I agree with you whole heartedly. It seems that the structure which has evolved is, as you point out, self-reinforcing. IT budgets never seem to have enough room to cover the areas which are covered by Shadow IT, which leads to a reinforcement and growing Shadow IT. I believe these groups need to work together in ways which are mutually supporting of each other. If this can happen, and their is no practical reason why it cannot, then the enterprise greatly benefit.

By: Darryl Pendergrass

Darryl Pendergrass — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 14:57:46 +0000

Thanks for the article.

I’ll start by saying that I have been on both sides of this issue. Organizations with business needs and a potential technology solution, often resort to building solutions internally to avoid the bureaucracy of approvals through formal channels. Once a solution is in place, that same organization seeks assistance from formal IT team. As a member of a formal IT team, I recently assumed solution management responsibility for a large application deployment that started within a business. My role included the responsibility of ensuring that all of the IT concerns were addressed including security, process and procedure development, contract negotiation, and license management. According to the business customer, the effort resulted in significant business value. In a perfect world, if the formal and “shadow” IT groups had worked together from the beginning, business value would have been delivered much early in the application life-cycle.

I do not see a resolution to this issue any time soon. The “use it or lose it” budget arrangements in many organizations focuses business managers on the short-term and protecting the headcount. In these arrangements, the overall organization is not as efficient because of sub-optimization within individual businesses and departments. Additionally, as long as IT is viewed as an expense rather than a revenue generator organizations will continue to keep the formal IT teams resources constrained prevent the ability add to the bottom-line.

By: Russ Aebig

Russ Aebig — Fri, 07 May 2010 15:27:17 +0000

I completely agree with your assessment, both of the value of Shadow IT and the harm that can be done if left to their own devices. My personal belief is that we need to recognize Shadow IT for the value they provide, and legitimize it as valid way of doing business. With the legitimization comes the parameters they should work within to accelerate their benefit, and provide the guardrails to stay within the overall IT game plan.

As for the name, I’ve also heard this class of professionals referred to as “Rogue IT” but I don’t like this any better than “Shadow IT”. Are there better names out there?

By: Vaughan Merlyn

Vaughan Merlyn — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 23:12:14 +0000

An important perspective, Russ. Shadow IT is inevitable, important, valuable, and needs to be legitimized, and thereby brought at least partway “into the tent” as it were.

Shadow IT acting as islands can do more harm than good – or at least, there good is limited to their immediate department. Acting as part of a network of IT capabilities, shadow IT becomes an extension to the formal IT capability – a multiplier, if you will.

Bud I do think that if we are going to legitimize it, we need to come up with a better term than “Shadow IT.” Suggestions, anyone?