The concept of shadow IT (or IT spending that takes place outside the purview of the IT organization) is nothing new. However, changes happening in the enterprise with respect to purchasing IT technology are thought to be increasing the amount of shadow IT that is taking place and will take place in the future. The ease of procuring cloud services means that lines of businesses are able to access technologies without having to go through the IT organization. The need for a digital marketing strategy to be competitive is forcing many CMOs to fund and drive technology initiatives that pertain to their organization. And in some industries (e.g. manufacturing, utilities), we are seeing the presence of information technology growing in functional areas that used to largely be the domain of operation technology – this blurring the line between operation technology and information technology.

To under earth this trend and to better understand its impact on the IT organization and the overall enterprise, IDC issued a survey to 64 US and Western Europe CIOs and other senior IT decision makers in the Spring, 2012. Findings from the survey along with our analysis are presented in the following presentation.