By John Emmitt
According to a 2014 IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing Study discussed in this CIO article by Joanie Wexler— Cloud investments from outside IT are on the rise; how should IT react?— in enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, nearly a quarter of cloud spending (23%) currently comes from outside IT. And that figure is expected to grow five percentage points over the next three years.
IT spending that is being done outside of the IT department’s control is known as “shadow IT.”
The 2015 IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing Study is discussed in this Forbes article: 7 Insights and Predictions from IDG's 2015 Enterprise Cloud Computing Survey.The latest survey revealed that enterprises will invest an average of $2.87 million in cloud services in 2016.
And, in 2015, 72% of enterprises have at least one application running in the cloud, growing from 57% in 2012. Enterprise adoption of cloud applications has grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.01% over the last four years based on IDG’s survey results.
Ms. Wexler argues that shadow IT serves a purpose, which is to push the IT organization to do things better and meet the new needs of the business. She also outlines three reasons why shadow IT is undesirable:
Shadow IT:
- Is usually more costly
- Can degrade application performance—due to unexpected network bandwidth demands
- Can increase your vulnerability to hacks (and security is already a top concern when it comes to cloud computing)
What’s the Best Way to Put an End to Shadow IT?
Organizations that implement an enterprise app store can put an end to shadow IT. The app store provides end users, and therefore business units, the software they need to do their jobs. And, it does this in a way that is highly streamlined, so that there is fast delivery of the requested software. (See this recent blog: 3 ways to Improve IT Responsiveness to the Business).
An app store enables IT to provide a list of available and authorized applications that employees can browse and then select what they need. If the request requires approval, the approving manager is automatically notified and once approved, the application is automatically installed on the end user’s device. If no approval is required, applications can take only minutes from request to installation.
The keys here are that business users can quickly get access to applications that have already been authorized to be used in the enterprise. This means there is much less incentive for business units to go around IT and purchase software themselves. IT maintains control of what gets deployed in the environment and IT Procurement maintains control of what software is purchased, which means you get the best volume discounts and other benefits of centralized control. Of course, this assumes that the app store has all of the products that your business users need, which means IT must be communicating with users to ensure that is the case. There can also be a request and approval process for items that are not already in the app store, but these will obviously take longer to fulfill.
What about cloud/Software as a Service (SaaS) applications? Since cloud and SaaS are where many Shadow IT purchases are happening, we need the app store to support these as well. Flexera Software’s App Portal enterprise app store allows employees to request SaaS applications such as Microsoft Office 365, Box and Salesforce.com, for example. Your users can get these cloud apps from the same app store where they get their desktop and mobile apps.
There are other benefits from using an enterprise app store. For example, by making available pre-authorized applications, the app store reduces the likelihood of unauthorized applications being downloaded and installed. This reduces the security risk associated with applications that have not been vetted by the security team.
To learn more, read this whitepaper by Microsoft MVP and technology expert Brien Posey: Requirements for Selecting a Universal Enterprise App Store.
To read more about Cloud and the impact on software asset management, please read this blog: Cloud and SaaS make my software license management problems go away. Right?