Crossing the Shadow IT chasm

Transcription

1 Crossing the Shadow IT chasm The CIO s guide to avoiding IT irrelevance Beating Shadow IT replacing the corporate IT stick with the BYO carrot BYOD starts and finishes with understanding your users! 7-steps to building a Corporate IT bridge with BYOD that serves, connects and protects users Conclusion

2 The survey at a glance Executive summary: Whenever Shadow IT is on the agenda, the focus is usually on security threats, escalating costs, and a lack of transparency. Of course, all these issues are important and must be tackled head on. But to focus on them in isolation is missing the point they re the symptoms of the Shadow IT disease, not the cause. Shadow IT exists for a reason it s easier and more practical for employees than the official corporate IT alternative. Most IT departments react by trying to eliminate it with restrictive usage policies, convoluted security measures and other barriers. What they should be doing is learning from it, and using that insight to make the experience they provide to users easier and better than the one provided by an unapproved app or service. This more constructive approach is the only way to stop the growth of Shadow IT in its tracks, and start reversing the trend. Inevitably, this means organizations must embrace the opportunities enabled by Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies, so employees get a familiar user experience that helps them stay productive. While BYOD brings many challenges, mastering them gets easier when you stop treating BYOD as a device management issue, and start treating it as a customer service requirement. The benefits of doing so are clear. Device ownership becomes immaterial IT becomes more closely aligned with business requirements User productivity, privacy and satisfaction are enhanced IT becomes an innovation center, instead of a cost sink The alternative should be unthinkable for any CIO: a loss of control over IT usage, a gradual reallocation of IT spending to users or business units and, ultimately, organizational irrelevance. Avoiding this scenario is easy with the right Enterprise Mobility Management approach and solutions.

3 1 Beating Shadow IT replacing the corporate IT stick with the BYO carrot Survey after survey confirms three key things about Shadow IT: It s rampant within organizations of all sizes It s growing fast It s largely invisible to IT departments For example, a 2014 study by Stratecast, a unit of Frost and Sullivan, found that 81% of line-of-business workers and 83% of IT staff were using non-approved SaaS apps at work. Another poll run by the Cloud Security Alliance found that 72% of IT and security professionals didn t know the number of Shadow IT apps running within their company. And Gartner has predicted that 35% of corporate technology spending will occur outside of the IT department by the end of All of which creates a big headache for any CIO, even without considering the inevitable management complexity, security risks and cost implications that these figures imply. So, what s the solution? Deal with users as they are, not how you wish they were When faced with these challenges, many IT departments react by erecting as many barriers to Shadow IT as possible through multiple security measures, banning personal devices, instigating restrictive usage policies, deploying solutions that are counter-intuitive to the user and so on. Unfortunately, there are two big problems with this approach. Firstly, it s unlikely to succeed in the long-term, because people will always find ways to circumvent policies they don t like or may not even be aware of. And secondly, it creates a lot of unhappy users that are also less productive than they could be. That isn t a sustainable position for any modern organization, especially as the proportion of digital natives in the workforce increases. A new approach is needed. In fact, the Stratecast survey mentioned above revealed some insights that can inform a smarter approach to dealing with Shadow IT that focuses on the user, rather than on technology: Almost 50% of workers said familiarity is the key driver for using Shadow IT Around a third blamed the usage on slow IT appro-val processes. Only a quarter said the non-approved app was better. This implies that Shadow IT is driven by basic natural human tendencies towards laziness and impatience not the quality of the technology! Increasingly influenced by the consumerization of IT in their personal lives, today s employees demand the same simple, fast, intuitive experience when they use technology at work. Access speed and ease-of-use are more important than owning the best technology. In this context, one of the top priorities for IT organizations should be to give employees the tools they need to perform optimally quickly and easily, regardless of who owns the devices they use. In practical terms, this means supporting user-oriented BYOD.

4 2 BYOD starts and finishes with understanding your users! As we ve seen, the reason Shadow IT has grown so quickly is that users now prioritize convenient consumption of technology, not ownership of hardware and software. It s not that users want to disobey the rules they just want the easiest solution! So, IT departments need to respond by providing an experience that is easier and better than the Shadow IT alternative. BYOD is a good place to start. Enabling employees with an optimal BYOD policy depends upon understanding them better in three crucial areas: Usage patterns: Given the diversity of requirements within most organizations, trying to enforce a onesize-fits-all BYOD policy without discovering who needs what, is often a recipe for low user acceptance and unnecessary cost. For example, a 25-year old road-warrior sales person, who is never in the office, may expect to be provided with a laptop, smartphone and tablet, plus access to a cloud-based CRM application. An office manager probably only needs a laptop, a basic mobile phone, and access to on-premise systems. IT needs to be able to deliver on both of these requirements, and all those in between, with the minimum of effort. Experience expectations: BYOD policies can easily fail if IT departments force users to change the way they use technology, or make completing their work more difficult. Multiple log-ins and security checks, third-party container applications, manual access management and having to keep open lots of different URLs or portals are just some of the things that frustrate and reduce the productivity of users. Today s workforce expects convenience and IT departments must ensure they deliver it. Privacy concerns: Most people have a very personal relationship with their devices, especially smartphones, which are usually within arm s reach 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. As a result, using a device for both work and personal purposes can create a lot of privacy issues. For example, what right does an employer have to know the location of a user when he or she is not at work? Should they know whether a particular religious, health or social application is installed on a device? The clear separation of business and personal data on every device is essential, regardless of device ownership. But BYOD is not just about data separation. Organizations have to ensure compliance with privacy regulations and prevent employee alienation. Getting to grips with these issues, or failing to, stops many organizations dealing with BYOD properly, or dealing with it at all. In fact, most IT departments have access to all the information they need to orient BYOD around users it just needs to be combined with the right management solutions. When done successfully, users IT requirements can be met in a secure, cost-efficient and fully compliant manner. However, it s at this point in the BYOD decisionmaking process that many CIOs believe they have to choose between maximizing security, or prioritizing ease of use and management simplicity. In fact, modern EMM solutions render this is a false choice, and provide a way of delighting users, maximizing the value of IT, securing data, and protecting privacy. The benefit: the CIO and his IT department don t just stay relevant they power the productivity of the organization.

5 3 7-steps to building a Corporate IT bridge with BYOD that serves, connects and protects users BYOD is the opportunity that can help organizations counter the Shadow IT threat. Here are the key aspects of an optimal, EMM-based approach. Define a cross-functional Workspace/EUC Team: For CIOs and their IT departments to become true business enablers, they need to interact more with business unit managers and users. BYOD presents the perfect opportunity to foster greater understanding between the two. Building a BYOD team that consists of people who know what users need, and those who can deliver it, is a huge step towards replacing Shadow IT with approved technology that people actually want to use. Analyze users, undesantstand their context, and deliver a service: IT departments have all the information they need to work out which users need what technology. They just need to centralize it within a system that can manage the device and workspace needs of every user in the organization. Users should be enabled to select the technology they want and have it delivered to them as a consumer without any support tickets being raised, and without anyone in the IT department touching a device. Use Shadow IT to define an optimal BYOD policy: Talking to users about how and why they use Shadow IT will help match their organizational and working context to their technology requirements. The solutions IT provides don t necessarily need to be better than the non-approved alternative (although it helps). But they certainly need to be easier, faster and safer to use, without compromising personal privacy.

6 Invest in a multi-platform EMM solution to give users the native experience they demand: Nobody wants to be forced into a technology cul-de-sac. Different people have preferences for different hardware and software vendors, device types and operating systems. IT departments need to recognize this and support it. A multi-platform EMM solution can enable simple, secure and scalable management of all an organization s devices within a single pane-of-glass management environment. Protect user privacy by ensuring data separation: Privacy concerns are often the battleground on which BYOD policies succeed or fail. A good EMM solution features visibility settings for users personal apps, profile-based separation of business and private data/apps, and does not need to track locations all while upholding corporate security policies. Automate and integrate EMM with ITSM and SAM: Most Mobile Device Management solutions begin and end at the device level. True EMM solutions integrate device management with IT Service Management and Software Asset Management to ensure cost-efficiency, transparency and compliance. Eliminate barriers for users with self-service and social ITSM: Employees don t want technology choices to be dictated by IT, and they want their needs met more or less immediately. The best way of accommodating these requirements is by enabling users to serve themselves anytime, anywhere through a centralized, cloud-based service store that automates technology requests, approvals and deployment. For maximum impact, this user-centric style of IT service delivery can be complemented with modern Social IT Service Management solutions. The latter allow employees to, for example, solve technical issues by interacting with other users via a support wall like you find on Twitter and Facebook, Service Desk chat functionality, and interactive web-based incident reporting.

7 4 Conclusion Shadow IT creates risk for organizations, CIOs and IT departments in terms of increased security threats, high and often invisible costs, and a loss of control over network access and data. But putting up barriers to try and nullify it is a fear-based approach that puts risk avoidance before competitive advantage. If it works, users will be frustrated and unhappy, and the IT department will be seen as hindering the business rather than enabling it. If they don t, the Shadow IT problem is likely to get worse not better, and the relevance of CIOs and IT departments will be threatened. To defeat Shadow IT, CIOs need to take a more positive approach. They should build a user-oriented infrastructure to enable a context-aware, consumer-style experience that is as easy, safe and powerful for users, as it is simple, secure and scalable for the IT department. The right EMM solution can enable all of this and more, and there s no better place to start than BYOD. Learn more about how Matrix42 can help you meet your enterprise mobility challenges. Visit: matrix42.com/en/products/silverback-by-matrix42

8 Matrix42 AG Matrix42 operates successfully in seven countries Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Sweden, and Australia. The company s headquarters are in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. Founded in 1992, the company has been part of the Asseco Group since 2008, one of Europe s largest software providers. Matrix42 s products and solutions are designed to simply and efficiently manage modern work environments whether physical, virtual, or at mobile workspaces. Matrix42 focuses on user orientation, automation, and process optimization. The company s solutions meet not only the requirements of modern employees who want to work from any location and with a great variety of devices, but also those of IT departments and businesses themselves. Matrix42 offers its solutions to organizations across different sectors who value forward-looking and efficient workspace management. The company also successfully collaborates with partners who provide on-site consultation to Matrix42 customers. Some of these leading partners include TAP.DE Solutions GmbH, Consulting4IT GmbH, and DSP IT Service GmbH. Further information available at Disclaimer This documentation is protected by copyright. All rights are reserved by Matrix42 AG. Any other use, in particular, distribution to third parties, storage in a data system, dissemination, processing, performance, and presentation is strictly prohibited. This applies to the entire document as well as to parts thereof. Subject to change without notice. Other company, trademark and product names, which are not expressly listed here, are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners and are subject to trademark protection. Matrix42 is a registered trademark of Matrix42 AG. HEADQUARTERS GERMANY Elbinger Straße Frankfurt am Main Germany Phone: Fax: info@matrix42.de SWITZERLAND OFFICE Poststrasse Zug Switzerland Phone: Fax: info@matrix42.ch facebook.com/matrix42de Copyright Matrix42 is a registered trademark of Matrix42 AG. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. UK OFFICE 88 Wood St. London, EC 2V 7RS, United Kingdom Phone: Fax: info_uk@matrix42.com Webversion-whitepaper-M42Mobile_BYOD-EN v01