Vanson Bourne: Senior Executives Bringing 'Shadow IT' to the Workplace

“Shadow IT,” the use of IT systems and solutions without organizational approval, is already a big problem for many organizations, and a new Vanson Bourne survey revealed this issue could worsen over the next few years.

Vanson Bourne’s “Out of the shadows” survey of 200 business decision-makers (BDMs) and 200 IT decision-makers (ITDMs) in UK and U.S. organizations with more than 1,000 employees showed at least half of all respondents said they believe shadow IT will become more prevalent in the future.

The survey also revealed 76 percent of BDMs whose departments are engaging in shadow IT said department heads or other senior staff members are leading the way when it comes to this practice.

“With senior members of staff steering it, it is not going to be easy for ITDMs to question — or indeed tackle — the engagement with shadow IT,” Vanson Bourne researchers noted.

Other survey results included:

“As well as a potential duplication of capability between departments and a loss of economies of scale, shadow IT also represents a fundamental shift in power between IT departments and the rest of the organization,” Vanson Bourne researchers said. “It is a wake-up call to IT departments. They are not going to be able to prevent shadow IT [from] occurring, but essentially, they will always be responsible for technology within their organization, whether they sanctioned it or not.”

Shadow IT could be an ongoing problem

In addition to the Vanson Bourne survey, other research indicates shadow IT could be an ongoing problem for many organizations.

A May 2014 Forrester Research study on software-as-a-service (SaaS) adoption revealed 43 percent of IT decision-makers said they believe shadow IT practices are major threats to information security, while technology solutions provider Softchoice last year noted the use of shadow IT is rampant within enterprises.

Vanson Bourne researchers pointed out IT professionals will need to learn more about shadow IT to better understand this problem and eliminate it entirely.

“[BDMs and ITDMs] must therefore adapt to retain control of IT and move from being the provider of technology to become the overall guardian of it,” Vanson Bourne researchers said.

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