Shadow IT

Kaizen, a Japanese word for “improvement,” is a term used in business to describe ongoing process improvement. The concept is simple: No process is perfect and, even if it’s working well today, the dynamic business environment could demand a change tomorrow. Kaizen is the relentless focu…

I touched on the problem of Shadow IT in the expanding world of IoT in a previous blog A Security Fabric for IoT. But there is another ecosystem of applications and hardware besides IoT devices to manage in the realm of Shadow IT. From the old days of departments buying OTS packaged software for spe…

Meet Derek: the man, the myth, the legend. As deputy CIO and the CTO, he is tasked with the overall technology strategy and oversees day-to-day operations for infrastructure, enterprise apps and research computing teams at the University of Arizona. By 5pm, he is enjoying the finer things in life li…

Shadow IT is not a new topic and the threat it brings can wreak havoc on your business as well as your leaders. For years, we have known that employees and lines of business are bypassing IT departments and utilizing cloud services to get their job done.  Just how much are we using? Research brings…

As I shared in my last blog, cloud use is rampant, pervasive, exploding! As a short recap, large organization are now using an average of 1,220 cloud services (most unknown to IT departments). The tremendous spike in cloud service usage presents challenges for IT including higher business risks, cos…

I’ve spent a lot of time on the road over the last few months.  Europe.  Asia.  Canada.  Latin America.  And everywhere I go I talk to our partners.  The one constant: frustration over their ability to have a deep conversation with customers about cloud. Partners have told me their customers want to…

This past week I attended the 2015 Gartner Data Center Conference in London.  This is always a great conference to learn from, although it always pays to look out for some of the hype too. There were key note presentations from the sprinter Michael Johnson and from previous UK government Vince Cable…

Shadow IT is nothing new as employees and lines of business bypass IT departments to get the cloud services they need to complete their jobs.   Rogue IT has resulted in a conversation around the unintended and potentially dangerous consequences of increased security risks, compliance concerns and hi…

Did you know it pays to optimize your cloud strategy? (Literally) A recent IDC/Cisco report shows that key business indicators (top-line revenues, strategic IT budget allocations, greater IT asset flexibility) all increased with a better cloud strategy. You see this in the results. On average, compa…