Modernizing IT: How to thrive as a CIO ‘value broker’

You might think that the CIO of a billion-dollar business would have nothing good to say about shadow IT. After all, rogue deployments have been keeping senior IT execs up at night for years, wondering if those a la carte antics will open the gates to a major security breach or break applications across the network.

But that’s not at all how Ian Pitt, CIO of LogMeIn, sees it. “Shadow IT keeps the IT people on their toes. It introduces competition and we learn that if we’re not delivering user requirements, users will look elsewhere,” he told CIO.com.

However, this isn’t a story about shadow IT. It’s a story about the changing role of the CIO in an era of lightning-fast technological change and increasing demands that IT become closer, much closer, to the business side of the enterprise. Pitt’s cautious embrace of shadow IT is a symptom of the redefinition of the CIO’s role, from service provider to what’s being called “a value broker.”

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