Regarding FSO, do you still think of Shadow IT antagonistically?

[Sean Dahlberg]

We recently posted a video from Cisco Live EMEA called "Full Stack Observability with Cisco," with @jeffrbul, Developer Advocacy Manager, and Sunny Dua, Product Management Leader at Cisco AppDynamics.

In it, Jeff says (around the 3:35 mark), "...one of the things we were all talking about is the concept of Shadow IT. Like how we even got to the place of having multi-cloud sort of organically as opposed to strategically was due to Shadow IT. We all sort of thought about it in a very antagonistic way, like oh my gosh, we've got to stop that. And what I love, where I think you're going with this now, is something I am really enjoying. We've all moved away from that and don't think of it by and large. We don't necessarily think about it so much as we've got to stop that from happening. We're starting to become more comfortable with that needing to happen because a problem wasn't getting solved for people."

Is that true for you? Of course, Shadow IT is still dangerous and can cause challenges for an organization. But has your mindset towards that changed over the year? 

[Alex Stevenson]

That's an interesting insight into Shadow IT.

Here's my two cents: I guess the danger level would have to do with how sequestered the shadow infrastructure was, which could mitigate some vulnerability. Shadow APIs (built and operated outside of management and qualty control) on the other hand, could definitely be even more dangerous because resources are being exposed, and if the Shadow IT is exposed through these types of APIs or other interfaces, that's seriously not good. Zombie APIs are dangerous as well because they've been forgotten about and are just sort of floating out there wreaking havoc. Fortunately, I don't think we can see zombie clouds or infrastructure as much as it would just be harder to lose track of or forget about those (as opposed to APIs)...but that's possible too when we consider the volume of resources some organizations and people are managing.

I'm sure shadow IT is what keeps the wheels spinning in a lot of places, so it has been extremely valuable, especially when you consider the company is not paying for a lot of these resources as well!

[jeffrbul]

Hadn't thought about it that way before @Alex Stevenson, appreciate the additional perspective!