Replace Shadow IT with an Intelligent Cloud

One of the dirtiest secrets that causes untold harm within an organization is the very real concept of shadow IT. Shadow IT occurs when business leaders get to a point where they can no longer wait for their IT team to catch up with technical debt and a priority list that has business-led AI innovation somewhere behind keeping up with latest maintenance schedules and handling the latest notice of legacy application end-of-life.

Instead, these industrious business leaders take the attitude of it being easier to get forgiveness than permission and choose to hide SaaS licenses under line-of-business budgets in order to satisfy their priorities for AI innovation for their specific operational or departmental use case.

The problem of shadow IT

As stated above, shadow IT is a direct result of the business side of the house becoming impatient with the lack of IT prioritization of their specific projects due to technical debt. The drag of technical debt is very real in every organization. Put simply, technical debt is the cost incurred by putting off upgrades or modernization in lieu of chasing today’s fire drill.

According to McKinsey & Company research 40% of the average technology portfolio is dedicated to account for technical debt and at least 20% of the technical budget dedicated to new products is diverted to resolving issues related to that technical debt. In addition to the costs incurred by technical debt, an organization also has to contend with other hard costs such as the cost of SaaS licenses hiding in line-of-business budgets as well as the very real potential of a security breach which can cause a median loss of $46,00 per breach.

The best way to eliminate the root cause of shadow IT is to deliver a platform where the business can lead their own AI initiatives, specifically an intelligent cloud. This will allow for the scalable modernization of legacy systems and at the same time provide a place where business leaders can satisfy their needs for rapid innovation but with the guardrails imposed by IT for security, governance and compliance.

What is an intelligent cloud?

For those not familiar with an intelligent cloud, it is really just the next evolution of cloud computing models to leverage the emerging power of generative AI and reinforcement learning to enhance capabilities and services.

These new capabilities and services can facilitate the realization of these business use cases that directly relate to the cause of shadow IT:

• Democratization of AI: Make business-led AI turning data into information available to all without the requirement of proprietary tools or resources
• Legacy analytics workflow modernization: SAS and Alteryx modernization with no-code solution eliminating proprietary dependencies by connecting mainframe, on-prem and cloud data silos
• Domain directed development: Reduce cognitive load and technical debt with GenAI plus Reinforcement Learning for domain directed development
• Legacy infrastructure modernization: Bypass disruptive legacy system migration projects with no-code solution eliminating outdated dependencies by connecting mainframe, on-prem and cloud data silos
• Intelligent applications: AI enablement of applications for personalization, automation and predictions without the need for dedicated tools and resources to master decision science
• Digital transformation: Accelerate cloud modernization and digital transformation projects with new advances in no-code generative AI and reinforcement learning

So, now is the time to prioritize an intelligent cloud project to reduce or eliminate the need for shadow IT and allow the business side of the house to focus on productivity and operational efficiency.

An Intelligent Cloud Made Easy

Establishing business-led AI-enabled Intelligent Cloud will lead to democratizing AI which in turn will transform business and domain experts into production innovators. This means the right data to the right business leader at the right time and improves daily decisions that impact productivity, waste, compliance, growth, and profitability.

UBIX understands that an intelligent cloud is at the intersection of data access, no-code GenAI with reinforcement learning, and human-centric queries to understand past, present and future states. Check us out to solve complex problems in both a generative and bespoke way to accelerate your business and we have also talked about how BI has fallen short on the ability to drive action and automation within your business.

Bottomline: Technical teams will get to focus on critical innovations, freeing them from the burden of technical debt and freeing data scientists to innovate rather than serve up reports.

Understanding the nuances of an intelligent cloud and how a no code solution can deliver on the promise of bridging the gap between data and decision making has never been easier. Download our free eBook titled “Solving the Problem of Data and Decision Making” to help better understand the details of emerging AI concepts and how to ensure digital transformation and business-led AI success. Or if you can spare 22 minutes for a mini–AI Readiness Workshop, you can contact one of our AI experts today.