Dive Brief:
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IT spending by non-IT business units will reach $609 billion worldwide in 2017, an increase of 5.9% over 2016, according to new data from International Data Corporation (IDC). By 2020, IDC expects business unit technology spending to nearly equal that of the IT organization.
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IT will continue to purchase some types of technology, such as servers, storage, and network equipment, but business units will spend more on PCs, monitors, mobile phones, printers and tablets than IT in 2017. When it comes to software applications, business units are expected to spend $150.7 billion versus just $64.7 billion by IT buyers.
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In some industries, IDC predicts business unit spending will overtake IT spending this year. Those categories include discrete manufacturing, healthcare, media, personal and consumer services, and securities and investment services.
Dive Insight:
There’s not much CIOs can do anymore to prevent areas outside of IT from purchasing technology. There are too many good solutions that are both cheap and easy to implement.
Attempting to prevent areas of the company from seeking out their own IT solutions is futile, and could potentially hamper bottom line business improvements. Instead, CIOs can find better success through influence rather than control. By putting strong governance processes in place and letting other areas of the company know the IT department is there to help protect and guide them, CIOs have a better chance of asserting some control.
A recent report from Sky High Networks found more than half of large enterprises now have a cloud governance policy in place to help control shadow IT. Among the organizations with a policy in place, Sky High found almost one-third of services were "not allowed" by IT, meaning they presented significant risk to the organization.
