Shadow IT is any technology purchased directly and not managed by the purchasing company. This could be hardware, software, or software services. Historical examples include the early days of the PC itself. The iPhone was also in this category. Early on information technology departments despised iPhones and iPads as they could not be managed by the traditional Windows-based infrastructures. Salesforce has a market valuation of more than $171 B – in the early days, this service was most commonly purchased directly by the sales teams, skipping the IT department’s vetting and purchasing processes altogether!
It’s usually here to stay
Shadow IT purchases most often stick around. Today’s knowledge workers aren’t going to ask and often don’t need permission to use the technologies they deem most effective. Outlasting the IT departments resistance and or staff to become an integral part of the company’s formal operations. While these technologies can sometimes be removed from the company, this is very rare. They find their way into our companies organically and adoption, also organic, is exceptionally strong when compared to traditionally purchased and implemented systems.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!
“Our future success is directly proportional to our ability to understand, adopt and integrate new technology into our work. ”
— S Ratnakar – Author
These services are here to stay so it makes the most sense to manage them. In very small companies very traditional software is often on the list. Microsoft Office for example is purchased individually by the employees rather than formally by the company. Rather than managing all the licensing, users, passwords, security controls, etc. via admin.microsoft.com; the software is installed and managed by the user. Dropbox is another great example. A company of nearly any size is likely using Dropbox, sometimes heavily. The software is also installed and managed by the users instead of the dropbox.com/team/admin Dropbox Business admin console. Zoom is a good example of another technology that is in nearly every company but often not managed.
Companies like Umzuzu can help!
As a Cloud Services Brokerage we work with companies like Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, Zoom, and others everyday. There are great processes and licensing options that allow you to bring these user accounts into the respective administrative control panels. This is critically important in order to maintain control of company accounts and data.
