My first Magazine Nutanix Flash Forward | Page 43

Chapter 4: Building an Enterprise Cloud

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with maintaining infrastructure and application security,
so it’s challenging when IT doesn’t have a full view into
what’s happening across the organization. As individual
business units start sharing data with cloud providers,
for example, that data may not be properly secured.
✓ Consistency: When you’re working with business intelligence, maintaining a single version of truth is critical.
Results shouldn’t vary as different departments view data.
All data elements should be consistent so that the organization can rely upon the decisions made with that data.
✓ Cost: When individual users start to procure their own IT
services, economies of scale become far more difficult to
achieve, which can increase overall costs.
So, it sounds like you should do everything in your power to
stop shadow IT in its tracks, right? Well, not so much.
Shadow IT rises because the organization has a need that is
not being met. Whether the need is real or perceived is generally irrelevant. Even if the need is only the perception of a
failing, something happened in the organization to cause that
perception.
It’s time for CIOs and IT leaders to embrace shadow IT. Find
out why the shadow systems were set up, and look for the
underlying shortcomings in IT’s services. That may even
require IT to extends its portfolio and begin encompassing
services that were stood up by end‐users.
In general, IT governance processes should provide support
for how shadow services can be brought under at least a semblance of IT management. The governance process should
outline how departments stand up such services so that they
comply with organizational security and data guidelines.
You can no longer ignore shadow IT, but you can’t run in and
put a stop to it, either. Instead, you need to implement constructs to help you discover the true needs of the business
and ensure that your environment meets those needs within
the confines of organizational policy.

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