Just a few years ago, the industry was all abuzz about employees who insisted on using their personal iPhones and iPads to access business applications. Within IT circles, the discussion quickly shifted from “how to stop it” (you can’t) to “how to protect your business while giving employees the freedom to make choices.” Today, many companies report greater productivity and higher employee satisfaction from their Bring Your Own Device, or B YOD, policies.
Are we headed for a similar discussion based around employees’ choice of the applications they utilize in business? Are we facing a B YO A (Bring Y our Own Application) revolution, in which employees claim the right to choose the tools with which they get their work done, while IT scrambles to protect corporate assets?
The revolution is already here, according to the results of a recent Stratecast survey. Thanks to the ease of access to Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, even non- technical employees feel comfortable and entitled to choose their software—and they are doing so in droves. In many cases, IT departments and security officers are unaware of the extent of “shadow IT,” and therefore unprepared to deal with it.
In this paper, we take a look at the state of “shadow IT” in companies worldwide. We reveal some surprising results from the Stratecast survey of IT and Line of Business employees. Finally, we offer tips to IT and business leaders to help them start addressing the risks associated with shadow IT in their own companies.