The beauty of this article is its unwillingness to question the basis of what it dubs “Corporate” IT while obviously, what it dubs “Shadow” IT, seems to be the more successful school-of-thought for supplying immediate IT solutions (and thats even by the articles account). Oh, and by the way, just for the record, I agree: Shadow IT works better.

The experts however would have me clarify that by saying Shadow IT has that unspoken success, because it has no corporate-backed confidence, and therefore no implementation procedures attached, nor political associations within the organization (a simple body just has less room for flaws). And, these same experts would likely have me also say that Shadow ITs failures as well remain largely unspoken.

Still, the article discusses concerns about administrating out-of-scope “innovations” made in fast-moving environments. This is something that will be of immense importance in the development of future IT platforms. These kinds of “Shadow innovations” do not go through the same rigorous internal procedures before being implemented. And thats mainly because they are being implemented by the people who have authority over these internal procedures, or that these procedures were never designed to be enforceable. A good example would be this “Shadow” Rule, put forth by most “Corporate” IT groups: You should not have on your computer any material or content that is not authorized by [Corporate IT].

Chances are… your desktop wallpaper image puts you on the offender list, right there. Besides that, it seems by virtue, “Corporate” IT should have mitigated the creation of a… “Shadow” IT.

I think this debate leads us smack into the middle of the Open Source vs. Closed Source debate, in a rather uninteresting corner albeit, wondering who should be the controller of “implementations”, rather then the controller of the solutions being implemented.

So, after all, I think the most important notion to take away from this article, and its desire to split IT into distinctly different nodes such as these, is that a large majority of CIOs retain little to almost no actual control over the platforms they help to create, or the networks they work to administrate. That the average circumstance is one where control is an illusion propagated to help persuade employees that they have a usable environment worth their time, and to persuade consumers that this particular platform or the products it provides are valuable human efforts worth your money.

The (sad) state of this affair is the result of most CIO’s abject unwillingness to realize Shadow IT runs the Internet, and always has. Shadow IT runs their company, and always has. And Shadow IT has been behind every major problematic discovery that has resulted in a solutions being provided by “Corporate” IT. Sadly, I have to add to that… “trust me, I’m a software developer, I’ve seen it!”