Spotlight on 'Rogue IT'

A panel discussion on 'raising the strategic profile of IT': Part 5 of our special report on the CIO Summit.

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Panel on raising the strategic profile of IT (from left): Thomas Salmen, Telecom; Stephen Whiteside, University of Auckland; Kevin Angland, IAG; Dave Fellows, GreenButton; Divina Paredes, CIO New Zealand

Projects run solely by IT will go down, says IDC’s Crawford del Prete, in his keynote at the CIO Summit.

Based on the following statistics, a priority for CIOs is to develop “a working relationship with the line of business,” as well.

To wit, by 2016, line of business (LOB) executives will be directly involved in 80 percent of new IT investments. This year alone, enterprises will initiate an average of 40 new projects — “with or without IT,” says Del Prete.

Thus, a discussion on ‘raising the strategic profile of IT’ at the CIO Summit morphed into a treatise on how CIOs are managing the multiple layers of an in-house/cloud/mobile/BYOD environment. The backdrop to what is variously called “shadow”, “stealth”, or “rogue” IT; the term refers to technology used by employees without clearance or even knowledge by the IT team.

There is a temptation to attempt “command and control” of all IT, according to panellist Thomas Salmen, former CTO with Kordia and now with Telecom Digital Ventures, but this is seldom possible. Sitting around a table with would-be stealth users can give a new perspective on their needs, he states.

The University of Auckland also tries to pre-empt and help a move towards user-acquired devices and software by engaging the user, says Stephen Whiteside, director organisational performance and CIO at the university. The goal is persuading users with a need that “the solution is not software; it’s a process enabled by software”.

The IT team, he explains, can often help the user get the best deal for a SaaS offering they’re insistent on using.

At insurer IAG, IT is one of the few services shared across the company’s several brands, says CIO Kevin Angland. This gives the IT team an unrivalled view of the whole business, allowing it to spend 75 percent of its time on “making the boat go faster,” while also doing the essential maintenance to keep it afloat.

The IT team can beneficially be a “broker” between in-house and cloud services, Whiteside says, but it is important to keep the perspective of supplying services to solve business problems, rather than talking with users about infrastructure.

Angland states that the challenge is in providing the integration layer between the two types of services, and in persuading users that integration is not as easy as they might think. Strong reporting lines from staff in the business provide early warning of a possible breakout of stealth IT.

Suppliers must be treated with the same care as users, says Whiteside. “The best suppliers are the ones you can talk to and who will help you when things go wrong.”

Close partnerships with suppliers are especially crucial to a small company with limited internal resources, adds David Fellows, CTO of cloud services company Green Button. “Partnership” suggests a “gulf to be bridged” between the business and IT, says Salmen. “The best results happen when the business is treated as one cohesive whole.” If everyone has “utter clarity” about the aims of the company, less negotiation is needed.

Asked for a single takeaway point, Salmen says “embrace change. ”

“There will always be change,” states Whiteside. “Handling it is all about relationships”.

“The challenge is to address internal complexity” and get the IT shop in a state to address the major changes of the third platform, says Angland.

“Start on the journey towards the third platform; don’t sit back,” Fellows adds.

“The solution is to provide these capabilities within the organisation.”

“Make it easy for the business decision makers to get access to the resources they need through supported channels, so the appropriate governance and security measures can be put in place,” he states.

“It’s really the compliance and governance pieces that are somewhat lacking today when it comes to the cloud and self-service app stores. Organisations, or at least the CEOs and CFOs, need an overarching view of this ‘everything as a service’.”

Critical conversations

Champions of change

CIO Agenda 2013: Transform, innovate, engage

Sraight talk from the top: CEOs on CIOs

CIO of the Year Craig Soutar, NZ Transport Agency

The CIO Summit 2013 Speakers:

Crawford Del Prete, chief research officer, IDC

Paul Strong, chief technology officer – global field, VMware

Craig Soutar, CIO, NZ Transport Agency

Dean Thompson, PMO manager, NZ Transport Agency

Simon Casey, CIO, Barfoot & Thompson

Jennifer Lucie-Smith, marketing manager, Barfoot & Thompson