Deliver on employee expectations or face threat from Shadow IT

Data leakage, compliance breaches, business inefficiency and hidden costs are just some of the risks organisations are leaving themselves open to by not meeting the IT demands of their workforce, Telstra’s Tom Homer has warned.

Speaking at Cloud Expo Europe in London, the Head of EMEA and the Americas for Telstra Global Enterprise and Services listed these problems as the potential results of Shadow IT, the phrase coined for the increasing trend of employees going against their company’s IT policy to implement their own solutions and platforms.

Referring to Telstra’s research report[1], ‘The Rise of the Superuser’, Tom highlighted that one third of organisations in the United Kingdom (UK) are already experiencing the problem and identified larger organisations as being most at risk of Shadow IT.

“The risk of Shadow IT is one which UK companies should take very seriously,” said Tom. “Today’s workforce is becoming increasingly tech-savvy and is not going to be content using yesterday’s technology. Organisations that listen and respond to their employees’ needs for the latest collaboration tools will have a clear advantage over those that don’t. These are the organisations we have identified to be Superusers.”

Telstra’s ‘Rise of the Superuser’ report involved interviews with 675 IT decision-makers in private sector multinational organisations with 250-plus employees, across the UK, United States, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.

Superuser organisations, Tom added, are defined as having implemented a full range of collaboration technology tools according to the needs of their workforce. This has brought benefits, such as improving organisational efficiency, along with increased productivity and employee satisfaction.
Based on the research findings, Tom went on to identify remote access, mobility, desktop virtualisation and video conferencing as just some of the collaboration technology tools which workers expect as standard.

“While hardware and software issues were traditionally the key challenges of introducing and implementing new technologies, our research found that more than three quarters of IT decision makers believe resistance from people is now either equally or more difficult to overcome.
“Our research suggests the consequent risks and cost implications of Shadow IT are likely to far exceed the original risks and costs saved by not addressing end user expectations in the first instance.

“Clearly, it is increasingly important for IT departments to ensure that end users are being listened to, in order to retain control of the technology infrastructure and employee usage. Organisations cannot afford to ignore such demands, especially in the current environment where employee expectations are high and they are more aware than ever about the technology available to them,” Tom concluded.