How Shadow IT Can Generate Huge Savings

The majority of organizations are allowing—and some are even encouraging—employees to create mobile business apps without any involvement from the IT department, according to a survey from Canvas. The company's "3rd Annual Mobile Business Application" survey reveals that corporate and IT executives no longer fear such shadow IT practices, especially when they've demonstrated the ability to boost productivity and innovation, while driving down operating costs. Many company decision-makers, in fact, are comfortable with this emerging trend and are investing in tablet acquisitions to encourage work teams to expand such efforts. "Innovation is occurring at such a rapid pace in the enterprise that employees do not want to wait around for overwhelmed IT departments, so plug-and-play cloud services are transforming everyday employees into citizen developers," said James Robins, CMO at Canvas. "Business decision-makers and IT departments recognize this evolution, and are shifting their perspective of shadow IT from a perceived liability to an invaluable tool for rapid innovation and cost management." Nearly 400 business and IT decision-makers took part in the research.