For years people in data warehousing and business intelligence have used the term “Shadow IT.” For example, check out this paper by Neil Raden called, “Shedding Light on Shadow IT: Is Excel Running Your Business.” Today I attended an Amazon Web Services event in San Francisco. While it seemed that most of the attendees were consultants trying to figure out cloud computing, there were some great cloud infrastructure customer use cases and case studies presented. This quote in particular caught my attention from an Information Architect who walked us through his virtual private cloud (VPC) infrastructure:
“If you don’t embrace cloud computing, somebody else in your company will. The result will be IT outside of IT.”
Sounds scary, but I’m seeing more and more of this every day. This particular presentation focused on the shift to agile processes in IT. Lean Integration came to mind…
I’ve written about Cloud Politics and the opportunity for integration as a service to be an IT / Line of Business bridge. Maybe it comes back to Nick Carr’s question (and book), in the era of cloud computing, Does IT Matter?
How is your IT organization adapting to and adopting the cloud? Is “IT outside of IT” growing? If so, is this a good or bad thing and what are you doing about it?
In(tegrate) the Clouds 
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