Organic IT

(By Dan Woods, forbes.com)

As the amount of technology readily available has grown, IT managers have had to deal with a problem known as Shadow IT, the phenomenon of pesky users solving problems on their own using consumer and Web technology.

Typically, a group of users fed up with their current IT support at their company go to Zoho, Ning, Wikispaces.com or Google Apps and set up their own environment full of shared spreadsheets, databases, wikis and other ready-made applications to collaborate and get work done. How dare they!

Shadow IT, the topic of the first JargonSpy column in July 2008, can become a serious problem if people start doing stupid things like storing credit card numbers in places that lack security. But for the most part, Shadow IT represents a failure of the traditional IT model, in which business people are expected to do their work only with tools provided by the company.

Some companies deal with Shadow IT by stamping it out and punishing those who had the wild idea of violating policy to get work done. This week we will look at a radically different way to handle Shadow IT. What if instead of attempting to eradicate Shadow IT, we flipped our attitude on its head and embraced the consumer-oriented capabilities on the Web and in the cloud as the first choice for computing infrastructure? Jon Pyke calls this Organic IT, in which the infrastructure grows from individuals.

Pyke, chief strategist at Cordys, a software company focused on business process management and organizing the cloud, put forth the idea of Organic IT in his blog. In Organic IT, laptops are not provided as a corporate asset but as a personal asset. The first stop for all applications should be what is available and working on the cloud. Salesforce.com ( CRM - news - people ) is a good first stop for CRM although Zoho would be cheaper. Need a portal? Make one from Ning. Need a project management space? Use Basecamp, Clarizen, Central Desktop or Open Air. Need to automate business processes? Cordys offers a product called Process Factory that individuals can sign up for. Other BPM vendors also have offerings that can be used by the public. Google Wave is another powerful option for coordinating collaboration.

The word "organic" applies to Pyke's paradigm for several reasons. First of all, the IT can grow and shrink organically because assets are attached to individuals, not supplied by the company. Most of the IT in the cloud is offered on a per-user subscription basis, so costs can rise and fall as people come and go. Second, the computing infrastructure is assembled from existing parts, not those constructed internally. Finally, the idea is that the infrastructure should evolve as new possibilities arise. Organic IT should essentially be disposable.