Shadow IT isn’t the exception for most companies but the norm. As technology spend, especially on collaboration, increasingly occurs outside of IT, IT organizations must change their operating model to become trusted advisors, helping to guide lines of business to the right solution.
As we note in the Nemertes 2014-15 Enterprise Technology benchmark, lines of business at more than 62% of companies directly spend money on IT services, often with little to no input from IT itself. This trend should only increase in the near future thanks to the twin trends of cloud and consumerization.
Deploying new applications no longer requires upfront investments in hardware. These days, thanks to the cloud, collaboration applications are as simple to procure as a book on Amazon.com or a song on iTunes. Now largely comfortable with the cloud thanks to salesforce.com, lines of business are increasingly unencumbered by fears related to security, reliability, risk, and cost and thus will seek out cloud solutions that meet their needs.
Going hand in hand with the cloud is the rise of easily downloadable applications, often delivered through freemium or ad-supported models. Such easy access to applications means that lines of business no longer need to wait on IT to meet their needs. If they want customer relationship management, they sign up for salesforce. If they want to share files outside of the company, well, they get a Box or Dropbox account. Voxer and WhatsApp fit the bill should they need mobile collaboration, while inContact or half a dozen other cloud providers will get them ready access to contact center capabilities. If they need a place for people to work together on files and projects, they can buy licenses for Glip, HipChat, Slack, or a dozen or more other apps. And, if they want video conferencing, they order a Highfive solution or sign up for a BlueJeans account.
These concepts aren't new. Indeed I remember first playing with Basecamp almost a dozen years ago for simple project management. Yammer brought up social as a service as one of the first widely deployed enterprise social collaboration tools. Skype invaded the enterprise in a big way in the early 2000s. But what is new are the breadth of offerings and the capabilities they deliver. Couple this with a workforce that's increasingly aware that the apps they need are only a download away and you've got a recipe for massive change in the role of IT in buying and supporting applications.
In this new environment IT has one of two choices. It can play a blocking role, doing what it can to prohibit lines of business from deploying their own apps. In some organizations, especially those subject to federal regulations like HIPAA, allowing individuals to procure their own collaboration applications raises serious risks and may not be allowable. The second choice for IT is to empower lines of business to go their own ways but take on the role of being a cloud services center of excellence (CoE).
A cloud services CoE acts as a cloud broker, maintaining a list of approved applications, developing selection and assessment criteria, and managing the enterprise relationship with cloud service providers. Additionally, the CoE:
• Serves up in-house expertise for developing and implementing cloud solutions, especially with regard to integrating them into identity management, security, and governance frameworks
• Handles technical support for cloud applications so that lines of business don't get dragged into issues related to network or application performance
• Provides training and support for development via APIs
• Enables information sharing across business units to facilitate exchange of experiences with cloud applications across business
• Serves up in-house expertise for developing and implementing cloud solutions, especially with regard to integrating them into identity management, security, and governance frameworks
• Handles technical support for cloud applications so that lines of business don't get dragged into issues related to network or application performance
• Provides training and support for development via APIs
• Enables information sharing across business units to facilitate exchange of experiences with cloud applications across business
Adopting the CoE approach to enabling cloud-based unified communications won't entirely end the dilemma IT often faces when lines of business sign on for cloud services without its knowledge. But, it will position IT as a partner and not an adversary, ideally eliminating the "I can't get what I want from IT, so I'll buy it myself" approach that can result in redundant applications or in deployment of applications that don't meet enterprise requirements for reliability, data protection, and integration.
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