The exponential growth of shadow IT

The term Shadow IT used to refer to software infrastructure that a company relies on, without the explicit knowledge of the company’s IT department. It can be a massive Excel spreadsheet, it can be some VB script or a SaaS subscription that no one is aware of. Shadow IT is, by definition, unmanaged. That means that you can move forward a lot more quickly, because you aren’t constrained by the slow company processes. The problem with that is that those processes include things like security, compliance, etc. A typical example is needing to do a survey. Google Forms does that, no? Let’s just use that rather than try to figure out what the actual survey tool in the company is. I’m sure that you can recall at least a few such stories, where all the replies were available to anyone with a browser. With AI, it is getting more interesting. Instead of having to wait for IT, non-technical users can build complex systems that bring real value to the company. They are also completely horrendous…

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