In 2015, 35 percent of IT spend was managed outside of IT departments, and by 2017, Gartner predicts that CMOs alone will spend more on IT services than CIOs. This includes both insecure and secure cloud apps and services that employees and business units are increasingly adopting without ITs knowledge or oversight – a movement known as Shadow IT. Today, every department from accounting to engineering is stealthily adopting these cloud services, causing serious problems for IT professionals who have to then quickly gain visibility and control over these services. What’s more, this process threatens to render IT irrelevant in critical IT purchasing and planning decisions.
The reality is you cannot transform what you cannot see. Gaining visibility and control over cloud apps is the first step in putting IT professionals firmly in the driver’s seat with respect to cloud IT planning.
