The Shadow IT department

  The era in which IT comes only from your IT department is over.
This has an impact on your users expectations for services. In a nutshell, consumer technologies are setting the bar for user experience, feature, convenience, etc.

New IT service organization will be one that helps users broker these services, not deny them.  Your future is here.

The Shadow IT Department

The consumer technology universe has evolved to a point where it is, in essence, a fully functioning, alternative IT department. Today, in effect, users can choose their technology provider. Your company’s employees may turn to you first, but an employee who’s given a tool by the corporate IT department that doesn’t meets his needs will find one that does on the Internet or at his neighborhood Best Buy.

The emergence of this second IT department—call it “the shadow IT department”—is a natural product of the disconnect that has always existed between those who provide IT and those who use it.

Link: User Management - Users Who Know Too Much and the CIOs Who Fear Them.

Comments

[IT Governance Blog]

Shadow IT is a major problem and not just because it reflects poorly on the service you are (or more likely are not) providing. I've been through some RIFs in my time. What happens a lot is that the business unit has to defend their staff and they can't defend their shadow IT person, so they are let go. And guess who then has to pick up all of that work, without picking up any backfill to handle it? The cycle then continues.

Bill