It may be easy for lines of business to purchase their own cloud computing services, but IT departments must remain a part of the process to vet vendors, future proof the organization and most of all, manage risk.

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Don’t lose cloud control
It may be easy for lines of business to purchase their own cloud computing services, but
IT departments must remain a part of the process to vet vendors, future proof the
organization and most of all, manage risk
Do you know who is buying cloud services on behalf of your organization?
As an IT department, it’s historically been your job to make any and all IT purchases, but
with the rise of cloud computing, specific lines of business within companies are buying
cloud services to solve their business problems.
And they’re not telling you.
According to a report released by Capgemini late last year, decisions around cloud are
increasingly being made by employees without an IT background. The report is based on
a survey of 460 organizations worldwide and jives well with IDC Canada research
showing that lines of business are more likely to realize the benefit of cloud at 41 per
cent compared to 25 per cent of IT departments.
Self-service technology that reduces the workload for IT is not a bad thing because your
department is likely overworked and stretched thin, but letting the marketing or HR
departments make significant technology investments independently is a recipe for
disaster. Not only is it the equivalent of setting up multiple point solutions on-premise,
but it could expose your organization to unnecessary risk.

2. It isn’t that these departments aren’t qualified to understand their own business
challenges; they may very well be able to find a cloud solution that meets their
requirements. However, they don’t have the knowledge your department has to
evaluate the implications of these cloud platforms, either in the short term or the long
term, and don’t comprehend the security ramifications.
For example, the HR department might have a mandate to set up an employee intranet,
and rather than turning to IT for guidance, they may look to a cloud provider first.
Meanwhile, not only are they unaware the organization has enough SharePoint seats
available, but they are not prepared to conduct the due diligence required when
selecting an external provider: What are their uptime promises? Do they have
secondary failover? What are their security provisions? How do they ensure privacy of
employee information?
In their mind, the HR department is saving time and money, not realizing they are
putting the organization at risk and adding complexity to the IT environment. Your first
instinct when realizing a department head has gone and made a technology purchasing
decision might be to clamp down and enforce stringent IT polices that return technology
purchasing to your sole discretion. But while that might assuage your fears about
security and compliance, it’s not ideal and it places a heavy burden on you and your
staff.
Instead, you should consider easy access to cloud computing an opportunity to educate
and collaborate with lines of business in your organization. Rather than be the final
arbiter of what technology is adopted by various departments, consider becoming a
broker of IT services to help business users vet vendors:
Line of businesses should know that they can and should come to you for their
computing needs
Let them articulate the problem they are looking to solve and the processes they wish to
improve
Make sure departments are aware of the technologies already available to them
As you engage and add external vendors, build a service catalog of preferred
applications and cloud providers
Engage with cloud service providers in tandem with the business unit seeking a solution
Look for cloud service providers who not only can solve your immediate problem but
have multiple offerings that you may require in the future. This will reduce the
likelihood of “point” clouds as well contracts and SLAs
In the same way that cloud computing can be the best of both worlds, so can a
collaborative approach between business and IT when purchasing cloud services.