How is Shadow IT making the CIO organization irrelevant?

Shadow IT has always existed as a boot-legged alternative to the corporate IT department, driven by internal SMEs. However, with the inadeptness of legacy systems and the consumerization of contemporary IT technologies, this trend has been on the rise.

Gartner had predicted that by 2015 about 35% of the enterprise’s IT expenditure will be outside the CIO’s budget. Interestingly, Gartner had also predicted that by 2017, the CMO will control the larger chunk of the IT budget. This means that soon, the CMO will control new technology purchase decisions, while the CIO will spend his budgets updating existing infrastructure. Irrespective of how this CMO vs. CIO battle pans out, it is pretty clear that shadow IT is on the verge of stepping out of the shadows.