Lessons Learned from Shadow IT

Shadow IT and start-ups were the original users of public cloud, over a decade ago. But as public cloud has become a multi-billion dollar business, let’s explore how the role of Shadow IT has evolved. 

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SHOW NOTES:

• Shadow IT
• Why Software is Eating the World (WSJ, 2011)
• “Does IT Matter” (Nicholas Carr, 2014)
• Bi-Modal IT (Gartner, 2015)

 

DOES SHADOW IT STILL EXIST IF PUBLIC CLOUD IS MAINSTREAM?

Shadow IT began as a way to be more productive in the office (server under the desk, WiFi in a conference room, etc.) and then it went to the cloud (SaaS, the IaaS/PaaS). But how did it evolve and what situations has it created now? 

WHAT DOES THE NEW DISTRIBUTED IT LOOK LIKE NOW?

1. Everybody has the ability to get access to (almost) any technology, via open-source or public cloud, or freemium services.
2. Everybody has the ability to learn something new (YouTube, ACloudGuru, Developer Evangelists, etc.
3. IT organizations have less influence over company-wide architectures and strategies.
4. IT still is often tasked with maintaining applications/security/compliance, even after another group deployed it. 
5. IT leaders are asked to lead digital transformation projects, and typically aren’t staying in the same place for more than 2-3 years. How much of that time is spent coordinating, communicating, re-organizing around DevOps, DevSecOps, FinOps, AIOps, etc..
6. There are hybrid applications, but they aren’t hybrid in the sense of consistently being deployed everywhere to manage vendor lock-in.
7. There are many multi-cloud companies because IT no longer has a boundary. And the economics of cloud means that most applications won’t move once deployed (easier to turn off than to move).
8. There are many, many pains-of-glass. 

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