There's been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere, among the punditocracy and elsewhere lately about "shadow IT" and "rogue IT." Thought I'd join in.
To define our terms, "shadow IT" and "rogue IT" typically refer to the tendency of users to go around IT to get something IT-related done. Examples can range from spinning up an instance of Amazon Web Services without notifying IT first to building and deploying a custom business app without informing or involving IT. Such efforts are often triggered when requests to IT go unanswered or are denied because IT says it lacks sufficient resources to meet the request.
The risks are obvious. Every shadow or rogue IT initiative creates the possibility of breaking something critical to a department or the entire enterprise and/or requiring IT to fix or remove something about which it knows little or nothing.
Because of these risks, shadow and rogue IT are getting a lot of attention. But I believe some of it is…misplaced.
Shadow and rogue IT are not "the problems" per se. Rather, they are indicators and symptoms. They indicate that users perceive, rightly or wrongly, that IT is unable or unwilling to meet those users' requests for IT resources those users believe are important or critical to their work. And they are symptoms of larger challenges facing IT — challenges often indicating a need for transformation.
Of course, IT has the right and responsibility to deny or redirect requests that aren't supported by meaningful, credible declarations of business need or opportunity. But IT must maximize its value to the business — and improve how that value and IT itself are perceived by the rest of the business.
To accomplish these goals, IT must find more ways to say "yes" more often. Which means that IT needs to transform its tools and processes to focus less on infrastructure and more on service delivery and management, automation and user enablement.
These are, not at all coincidentally, areas in which ServiceNow shines. With the new Eureka release (available now!), ServiceNow customers are increasing and extending their IT teams' abilities to deliver higher levels of consolidation, automation and consumerization, within and beyond IT. The latest example: Vitamix using ServiceNow to automate and scale services in HR, operations maintenance and facilities management. And in IT, by the way.
The more often IT can say "yes" to requests for new or improved custom applications or other IT-powered resources, the less IT has to worry about shadow or rogue IT. And the more IT can focus on delivery and management of effective services, the more often it can say "yes" to those requests that make business sense, and say "no" to those that don't without retaliation.
Shadow and rogue IT — opportunities and incentives to initiate or accelerate the transformation of IT into a key enabler of the service-oriented enterprise. Sounds a lot more promising than threatening, doesn't it? Let me know what you think, please, and let's see if we can't help to convince those pursuing shadow or rogue IT efforts that, as the Borg Collective used to say on "Star Trek:"
But in a good way…
(Image credits: "The Shadow" from kabooooom.com; "Rogue" from imgarcade.com; "The Borg Collective" from mbtimetraveler.com.)
(Disclaimer: any resemblance between the Borg Collective pictured above and any actual IT people is purely coincidental.)
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