Category: Uncategorized

There is much interest and inquiry related to the recent tariff actions by the current U.S. administration, how they will impact technology pricing and what – if any – strategies are recommended.

To better assess the recent and possible future tariff impacts on the technology industry, we first need to acknowledge that due to the technology industry globalization, nothing is exclusively manufactured or hosted in the United States. Technology companies all have some dependent regional relationship with Asia, Mexico, and/or Canada, which is where the recent tariffs have been targeted. These tariffs, if put in place for the long term, will have an impact on hardware, cloud services, and to some degree, software costs.

Larger suppliers – including but not limited to – Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and IBM all have data centers in Asia, Canada, and Mexico. They also purchase large scale servers, storage and related components. Depending on how they are getting assembled and where they are getting shipped from and to, there would be varying tariff impacts to their component pricing. This likely means some of that pain will be passed on to their clients.

Hardware, including semi-conductors and related components, imbedded software used for PC’s, network & telecom hardware, smart phones, smart devices, large scale computers and storage, are all part of the technology component eco-system. Due to the current state of inflation, continuous improvements and advancements, like AI in hardware, there are always expectations of price increases through each enhanced model year.

If tariffs are in place long term, companies should brace for hardware increases anywhere from 9% to 45%. These increases go across various hardware platforms. Customers may not feel the related price impact immediately after tariffs have been announced as the effects on the supply chain typically take time to play out. IDC is now seeing tech companies in the hardware space already increasing prices to their clients.

Cloud services companies such as AWS and Microsoft have held prices steady so far and have not announced when and if price increases will occur. AWS is offering incentives to their long-term clients who continue to use and plan to purchase additional cloud services. AWS appears to be doing this to maintain a competitive advantage.

In the hardware space it is likely that most suppliers will look to hedge their bets and begin price increases sooner or press their customers to take early hardware inventory to avoid major price increases as the tariffs go full board. HPE and Dell have already begun increasing prices to their clients, yet Cisco and Apple have held off so far.

To address risk in this space companies may take hardware inventory earlier than planned which can create a delay or shortage of products in the supply chain. The likelihood is that many organizations having critical and productivity technology requirements will be scrambling to manage budget and infrastructure risk.

One choice that some companies are making already is to delay and/or reduce the volume of orders, filling only the most critical of needs. Another common practice that some companies are looking to consider is brokered hardware. This is mostly the purchase of used hardware from OEM’s and third parties such as resellers and other industry specific suppliers. The idea is that used hardware can mitigate the increased pricing of new hardware that is already in supplier inventory and immune to tariffs. The advice here is for organizations to be rigorous, disciplined, and have governance with how any used hardware brought into their infrastructure needs to be adapted into their ecosystem.

What we do not know with certainty is how the intended strategy for these tariffs will play out and resonate across the technology supply chain, hence the need to keep close to all available data sources. There appear to be specific tariff objectives regarding each country, meaning that these tariffs may have multiple intentions other than the traditional implementations. With Canada, the tariffs are being used to address the flow of illegal narcotics into the U.S. With Mexico the tariffs are being used to address the situation at the U.S. southern border. With China, the tariffs are being used to address the opioid supply chain situation. With parts of Southeast Asia tariffs are being used to address data privacy concerns.

Given the non-traditional and negotiation use of the tariffs, there is a real need to be vigilant with the ongoing activities, discussions, and announcements to avoid making poor decisions and/or taking unnecessary actions. It’s better to watch how this plays out day by day. There is a lot at stake here if companies begin to react too quickly. Of course, a concern could be that if timely decisions are not made in synch with the tariff actions occurring, companies could end up with unplanned, unmitigated risks and consequences.

Given the complexity of these tariffs and the ongoing shift of positioning it is very challenging to decide when and how to implement any plan. The good thing is that with the current White House administration we are getting transparency with continuous updates on the tariff situation from a variety of media sources. It would appear business leaders will at least have some reasonable time frame to execute a well-orchestrated plan. This helps with the decision-making tree organizations need to create and manage. Creating these critical decision planning mechanisms helps to make informed decisions rather than uninformed rash decisions, especially in this current fluid situation.

Keep in mind that in 2022 the CHIPS (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors) and Science Act was put into place to help reduce the United States dependency on other countries for designing and building technology components and infrastructure. There is still a way to go before the goal is reached. However, there are estimations that the United States will triple its current semiconductor production by 2032. The CHIPS and Science Act was not initially planned to eliminate global technology trade but more to reduce its current global technology supply chain dependency. Most recently the new administration has been threatening to terminate the funding of the CHIPS act but as of now, it doesn’t look like it will be supported.

Latest news: The White House has announced a temporary 90-day tariff exemption on technology products, providing relief under HTSUS code 8471, which covers a broad range of devices and components such as smartphones, networking equipment, computers (including laptops), and storage devices. This move should prevent tech suppliers from raising prices during this period.

Here are a set of recommendations for what you can do now to plan and help address possible impacts to your technology supply chain.

Create and/or appoint someone to provide daily briefings to your technology and C-Suite executives on the ongoing tariff activities. This will increase your chances of making more informed decisions.
Create an internal site and/or email thread that captures these briefings and updates.
Add this Legislation Watchlist link for monitoring current trade actions: https://insideidc.sharepoint.com/:x:/t/WorldwideMacroTechProgram/ERh2FyoMP3NGkHXkgPd7fTUBEwRmgioPhQ19H-6hCGC_KA
Take full inventory of your short- and long-term critical technology purchase plans and rank them in importance.
Have your category sourcing managers, especially those assigned to larger suppliers keep a close eye on multiple public information resources related to tariff impact.
Discuss and review possible purchase impacts and strategies for reducing and/or eliminating tariff-related cost impacts with your suppliers, including resellers.
Assess whether any planned technology purchases made ahead of existing plans will have any long-term repercussions to your technology roadmap and/or fiscal plans to your organization.
Consider whether brokered hardware can be a partial mitigation to price increases.
Confirm whether any orders currently in play and already contracted will have any price impact. This might be complicated if the inventory has not been built yet.
Talk to your partners, including resellers, consultants, research firms, and others about what they are seeing with customers in terms of impact and how they are addressing the issue.
Execute your well-planned risk-based and flexible strategy with the awareness that any of these early political stage acts will likely have many unpredictable moments.

Latest Update: May 7, 2025.

Over the last five years, B2B tech buyers’ preference for digital engagement across their journey has risen substantially. GenAI is a driving force behind this shift in buyer behavior – and marketers must capitalize on it before it’s too late.

In 2024, 74% of B2B tech buyers have said they’re going to engage more with e-commerce and work less with salespeople, an increase from 56% in 2020.

IDC has learned that 50% of mid-market tech marketers are either in a “wait and see” mode, or in an AI experimentation phase.  But the C-suite says that the number 1 external factor that will drive marketing expectations in the next year is technological advancements, specifically Gen AI. It is critical for mid-market tech CMOs to identify the most effective strategy and tactics to engage with their customers for 2025 – and meet C-suite expectations. 

IDC’s webinar “Marketing’s Imperative in the Dawn of the Experience Era” by Laurie Buczek, GVP, Executive Insights and Leadership Services talks through how marketers must react to a shift in buyer behavior, C-Suite expectations and their changing own roles.

Here are 3 burning questions answered in the webinar.

How important is it to keep experiences ‘human-like’ while using AI tools, and how do you recommend marketers do that? Should humans be worried about their jobs? Or will humans still be needed to manage the AI tools?

Keeping experiences “human-like” while using AI tools is crucial, especially in B2B tech marketing, because buyers want to feel seen, heard, and understood. Historically, early chatbots lacked human-like responsiveness—leaving users frustrated with clunky, impersonal interactions. Today’s buyers expect personalized, frictionless, data-backed journeys.

Marketers must focus on creating digital experiences that feel human, especially across self-service channels where buyers want to quickly find information and move forward in their journey without hurdles.

89% of buyers in IT roles agree they will use more AI guided assistants to act as their intermediary before they reach out to a salesperson.

Humans shouldn’t worry about being replaced by AI but instead should focus on evolving alongside it. Buyers still value human connection, particularly when it comes to building trust and relationships. While digital experiences are increasingly replacing tasks once handled by humans, the human role isn’t disappearing—it’s being redistributed. AI can take over repetitive, time-consuming tasks like data entry, reporting, and responding to basic inquiries. This gives marketers the freedom to focus on strategic, creative, and relationship-building work—areas where human insight remains irreplaceable.

Marketers must learn to manage AI tools and to guide their use strategically. As AI continues to be integrated across the buying journey, marketers must lead the design of seamless, omnichannel experiences that combine digital tools, chatbots, interactive content, and in-person engagement. It’s not about choosing between human or AI—it’s about harmonizing them. Trust is still built through human interaction, but buyers are increasingly comfortable engaging through digital channels, even for complex or high-value decisions. AI isn’t replacing humans; it’s reshaping how and where we show up—and marketers who embrace this shift will lead the way.

C-suite expectations seem to be high when it comes to AI, automation and Martech. What’s the one thing a CMO should focus on first to capitalize on the AI potential?

A CMO must commit to becoming the “conductor of the orchestrated journey”. With AI and automation becoming central to C-suite expectations, the one thing a CMO should focus on first is building a strong, connected foundation of customer data and analytics. This enables everything else—predictive models, intelligent content delivery, and autonomous marketing. By becoming the “conductor of the orchestrated journey,” CMOs can use this data to deliver the right message, at the right time, through the right channel.

This focus empowers marketing teams to drive not only customer acquisition and engagement but also to fulfill their expanding role as stewards of the full digital customer experience. Without this strong data infrastructure, AI capabilities can’t reach their full potential, and marketing will struggle to meet evolving executive expectations.

Additionally, CMOs should prioritize modernizing the Martech stack to activate AI effectively and align with C-suite priorities. The expectation isn’t just about implementing tools—it’s about marketing leading digital business transformation, improving customer intelligence, and governing the responsible use of AI. As AI becomes deeply embedded in how buyers engage and how marketers operate, CMOs are now central to ensuring both innovation and trust. The executive team is looking to marketing not just for growth but for leadership in navigating this new AI-driven era. So, by focusing first on data readiness and Martech modernization, CMOs can unlock AI’s full potential and position marketing as a strategic driver of business transformation.

How do you see product-led growth as a key to success for B2B companies?

There are debates about what works better, product-led growth (PLG) or brand-led growth but the core message is no matter what way you want to grow, make sure that your growth is centered around the customer. The leaders that succeed are the ones that prioritize a customer-centered approach, ensuring that their product delivers immediate value and drives adoption naturally. When businesses rally around the customer’s needs, they create a more seamless and engaging experience that fosters organic growth, reduces friction in the buying process, and ultimately leads to better results.

Companies that fail to align strategies around the customer often experience internal conflicts that can hinder progress, create inefficiencies, slow decision-making, and, in extreme cases, contribute to a company’s downfall. The key to success is embracing a collaborative, customer-first mindset across the organization that is informed by AI-enabled market and customer insights.  When product, sales, and marketing work together under a unified vision, they create a growth engine that’s fueled by customer satisfaction and advocacy. In this way, no matter the growth strategy, the culture shift enables sustainable, long-term success for B2B companies.

The Marketing Imperative

The next era of marketing is here. AI is opening a new world for marketers to drive innovation, differentiate their messaging and accelerate growth. The beauty of AI is it allows marketers to shift mundane tasks to AI while unleashing their own creativity. Think about ways that you can use AI to do things differently from a marketing standpoint.  Marketers that are leading the charge into the AI-fueled experience era are already seeing great results. For more insights on how to prepare for the next era of marketing, watch IDC’s webinar, “Marketing’s Imperative in the Dawn of the Experience Era”.

The wave of new tariffs introduced by the US administration will drive up technology prices, disrupt supply chains, and weaken global IT spending in 2025. Not only will these tariffs have a direct inflationary effect on technology prices in the US, but growing concerns about a broader economic slowdown will lead to weaker investment by businesses and consumers around the world, even prior to any slowdowns appearing in earnings or economic data. This impact will unfold quickly in 2025, despite the strong countervailing force of growing demand for AI and related technologies.  

On March 31, IDC published a downside scenario in which global IT spending would grow by 5%, rather than the 10% growth we currently project in our baseline forecast. This scenario was modelled before the latest tariff announcements in April but already reflected the potential impact of a broadening economic slowdown. While the details of final tariffs don’t align exactly with that downside scenario, we expect our baseline forecast will move towards the lower end of that 5-10% range over the next few weeks.  

As a result, we are developing a new downside scenario that reflects the possibility of a broadening global trade war, which will likely include additional tariffs and retaliatory measures by many countries. These may include protective actions against countries other than the US. Our new baseline forecast in April will reflect what we now know, which is that these new tariffs will have a significant negative impact on the ICT industry in 2025. 

This situation remains highly fluid and dynamic. Tariffs set to be implemented on April 9 may yet be adjusted or postponed, and the response in other countries could include stimulus measures to protect short-term economic stability in China and elsewhere. This is a moving target, but the risk of a global recession is higher than one week ago, with some economists now pegging it at 40%, and this uncertainty will have an immediate effect on business and consumer confidence.  

New tariffs will have an inflationary impact on technology prices in the US, as well as causing significant disruption to supply chains. While this impact will be most immediate in devices, then other compute, storage, and network hardware as well datacenter construction, even sectors such as software and services will be affected if tariffs are longer lived. There’s also an indirect negative impact of tariffs on software and services, where the provider delivering the software and/or services will incur increased costs for the infrastructure to develop and deliver the product, meaning that many software and services vendors will need to include increased costs in their own pricing assumptions.  

Some devices and hardware vendors may seek to mitigate the impact, but US customers will swiftly feel the effect of higher prices. Lean inventories and rapid manufacturing cycles mean that price hikes will materialize quickly. The broad, unfocused nature of these new tariffs leaves manufacturers little room to adjust.  

It’s important to note that our surveys of IT buyers had remained relatively resilient through March. While there is significant concern over the uncertainty caused by tariff policies, a majority of firms in March were trying to protect their key investment priorities around AI, analytics, security, and IT optimization. IT is more important to the business than ever before. We will be checking in with IT leaders on these same issues in mid-April. 

Price sensitivity is rising, however, which history shows is a major cause of competitive disruption. The IT market will continue to be more resilient than during previous economic cycles, and more resilient than many other sectors of the economy. Service providers will try to maintain their aggressive investment in deployments of AI infrastructure, and they have the ability to optimize asset use to much greater extent than even the largest of their enterprise customers. For businesses, IT has largely transitioned from a capex to an opex model in which a larger share of technology spending is essential to business operations and is increasingly tied to business conditions.  

Despite all of this, the reality of a slowing economy and rising unemployment will have a direct impact on IT spending. Consumer spending is likely to be hit hard. Businesses will first look to cut spending on devices and on-premise infrastructure, seeking rapid cost benefits to protect the bottom line. Any job cuts will have a direct impact on some types of IT spending.   

IT services spending is vulnerable to a slowdown in new contract signoffs, which will be driven by a broader economic slowdown in the next 6-12 months. Combined with other economic headwinds, including government spending cuts in the US, this adds up to a much weaker outlook for short-term investment in new technology projects.  

Conclusion 

Our March 31 forecast of 10% growth for global IT spending will be reduced significantly in April, based on the tariff announcements of April 2. The situation remains extremely fluid, and subject to new announcements or changes, but a weakening economy will lead to IT spending cuts and delays in the next six months. We will move closer to the previous downside of 5% growth, which reflects a rapid, negative impact on hardware and IT services spending. 

Agility is key to navigating this period of major disruption and uncertainty. It may take several months for the full picture to become clearer, but this is already causing delays in some types of investment. Underlying demand for IT is still high, and the likelihood of a decline in overall IT spending remains very low, but adjusting to a new baseline of slower growth in the near term is our new reality.  

The tariffs announced this week have introduced significant instability into the IT market. If the measures announced on April 2 stay in place and trigger an escalation of retaliatory measures leading to a global recession, the impact on IT spending will be swift and downward, potentially leading to the worst market performance since the great financial crisis of 2008-2009. 

IDC will continue to monitor developments closely. We’ll update our forecasts accordingly and publish new analysis as the implications for IT investment become clearer in the weeks and months ahead. 

Contributors: Crawford Del Prete, Meredith Whalen, Rick Villars, Ryan Reith

Generative and agentic AI have begun to completely transform how enterprise applications are designed, delivered, and engaged with by users.  

AI assistants that work reactively and cooperatively with humans to provide productivity and efficiency gains, as well as AI advisors that provide enhanced insights and recommendations to organizations, have both quickly become must-haves in modern software.   

AI is helping to transform software solutions that have historically been passive tools, into active decision-making partners, through advancements in machine learning, natural language processing, LLM development, and widespread generative AI advancements.

IDC estimates more than 50% of the enterprise application market is already AI assistant or AI advisor-enhanced, with most software solutions now offering at least some level of these embedded capabilities.  Beyond this, approximately 20% of the market is also now further supplementing their applications with complete AI agents. 

These agents are independently perceiving, evaluating, and acting upon data, helping to move organizations toward more integrated and autonomous work practices.

The Agentic Shift

While AI assistants and advisors rule the day, AI agents are going to win the race, and we are only a few short years away from this pivot occurring.  Over the next 3-4 years, generative and agentic AI advancements will help push enterprise applications to a state where most offerings available will be significantly enhanced and augmented by agent-driven capabilities. Agent-driven interfaces will become more dominant, and reliance on traditional interface and UI design will begin to fade.  This will result in slowing development of AI assistants and advisors, and a more prominent focus on text prompt and voice-based user engagement.

This evolution in software will ultimately result in most enterprise applications evolving to become agent-led, where agents replace entire functional areas within the application.  For example, within supply chain management (SCM), we will see an agent for all inventory management responsibilities, another agent for logistics, and so on, and the traditional interfaces in enterprise software that we have grown accustomed to over the last two to three decades will become less frequently used.  

Eventually, we foresee agents taking the next logical step and replacing entire applications, with this phase likely starting to ramp up more significantly by the early 2030s.  For instance, we will see companies enlisting an SCM agent, or possibly an entire fleet of SCM agents, instead of traditional SCM software.  The same will occur in other functional markets, such as a CRM agent/agent-fleet, HCM agents, EAM agents, finance agents, etc.  

In IDC’s recent Future Enterprise Resiliency & Spending (FERS) Survey, which polled nearly 900 companies during February 2025 about the impact they expect AI agents will have on their enterprise app investments, more than 80% of companies said they believe “AI agents are the new enterprise apps, triggering reconsidering of our investments in packaged apps”.

Vendors Must Keep Pace to Remain Relevant

With this agentic shift looming on the horizon, it is extremely important that software vendors pay close attention and keep pace to ensure that they remain relevant and competitive.  Traditional barriers to entry into enterprise application markets will be increasingly challenged by a new era of software solutions that are designed as agents and are quicker, easier, more effective, and more intuitive to use than conventional software. 

Dozens of agentic startups will aim to compete and win market share from traditional software vendors, and “agents as apps” will open the door for a new generation of enterprise application competition.  Likewise, platform vendors will look to overlay agent capabilities on top of, and across applications, as they too try competing further up the stack.  Results from IDC’s FERS survey further support this notion, with 83% of companies stating they believe “AI agents create a new intelligence layer over apps, eliminating barriers to switching between suppliers”, and 76% of companies confirming that “AI agents mean we are more likely to consolidate our enterprise app suppliers”.

Now is the time when today’s incumbent enterprise software vendors should already be planning for this agentic shift, formulating a product roadmap transformation strategy and timeline that will keep pace and proactively protect their portfolio and market share over the next 5-10 years. 

To help software vendors envision this journey more clearly, including its expected timing and the steps through which applications are set to evolve, IDC has published its framework for the agentic evolution of enterprise applications, which is shown in the figure below.  The diagram shows both the phases through which we expect software to evolve, as well as our estimated distribution of adoption timeline This illustrates how quickly enterprise software is currently expected to make this agentic pivot.

Where does your organization currently fall on this journey? Have you already designed your product roadmap to become agent-led? Have you evaluated your competitive differentiation to ensure its sustainable and defendable throughout this agentic pivot?  Let us know, we would love to hear from you!

Shadow IT, or black IT, is a reality in most organizations today. The concept refers to technology solutions — software, services, and infrastructure — procured and implemented by business units without formal approval or oversight from the IT team and fueled by decentralized technology budgets and the proliferation of cloud services. While shadow IT presents significant risks, it can also drive innovation.

For CIOs, the question shouldn’t be about whether to eliminate shadow IT but how to harness its potential while mitigating its dangers.

At its core, shadow IT arises from frustration. Business teams focus on speed and results, often perceiving IT as an obstacle rather than an enabler. In some cases, this frustration is justified — IT inefficiencies can slow progress. However, organizations that prioritize maximizing the value of existing technology over continuous innovation may inadvertently drive business units to seek their own solutions.

There are organizations that go to great lengths to eliminate shadow IT. Often this is through policy and stringent financial controls that make it almost impossible to procure anything that looks technology related. The cost of policing these restrictions can be high, both in terms of effort and potentially in terms of lack of business agility.

The 5 Key Risks of Shadow IT

While overreach in policing shadow IT can be problematic, letting it run rampant is ill-advised, as it carries five negative implications for organizations. CIOs need to be aware of these risks:

Increased costs: Procurement handled at the business unit or team level rarely benefits from volume discounts or enterprise agreements. Without IT oversight, organizations miss cost-saving opportunities through standardization and economies of scale.
Security and compliance risks: Teams focused on immediate needs often overlook security and regulatory requirements. Unvetted solutions introduce data privacy risks, non-compliance with industry standards, and potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Redundant and incompatible systems or data: Multiple teams purchasing similar but non-integrated solutions leads to fragmentation: data silos, duplicated efforts, and inefficiencies that hinder long-term digital transformation strategies.
Vendor manipulation and lock-in: Non-IT professionals negotiating directly with technology vendors might not ask the right questions about scalability, integration, or long-term costs. This can result in poor contract terms, hidden fees, and vendor lock-in.
Wasted time and effort: Each meeting with suppliers to discuss the same questions that others in the organisation have discussed is wasteful. Each hour spent on implementing a system that already has an implemented alternative is wasteful.

Shadow IT: A Sign of IT Failure or a Form of Business Agility?

Despite its risks, shadow IT is not necessarily a sign of failure. Uncontrolled shadow IT can indicate dissatisfaction with IT’s responsiveness, but it also signals business units’ willingness to innovate. The real issue is not the existence of shadow IT but whether it is being leveraged constructively.

Organizations that take an overly rigid stance — blocking all non-standard technology purchases — often end up stifling innovation. A CIO’s role is not just to prevent risk but to create an environment where business-led innovation can thrive without compromising security, compliance, or efficiency.

In fact, shadow IT can be an exceptionally effective source of innovation. It can be an asset when professionally managed. And business teams often procure solutions that directly address their pain points.

So, how can IT leaders embrace shadow IT without losing control?

Three Strategies to Harness Shadow IT

In my experience as advisor to CIOs, I have helped implement three methods that work well to satisfy business units’ thirst for agility in a controlled way.

Implement an IT-Approved “Solution Finder”

Think of it as an internal IT marketplace — a curated list of approved SaaS solutions, third-party tools, and integration-friendly alternatives. This provides business units with a faster, sanctioned route to solving their problems while ensuring security, compliance, and cost efficiency. Encourage collaboration between IT and business teams by allowing teams suggest technology that would otherwise become shadow IT.

Create a Protected Budget for User-Driven Innovation

Allow business teams to pledge partial funding from their budget toward team-defined technology investments. IT can aggregate these requests and match these pledges with a dedicated innovation fund, ensuring proper vetting while enabling efficient business-led experimentation.

Introduce a “DARC Tax” on Risky Shadow IT

If teams invest in what I like to call DARC (dangerous, awfully conceived, redundant, or costly) solutions, they should face financial consequences. A budget penalty on non-compliant purchases encourages better decision-making and incentivizes teams to engage IT earlier in the process. It can also be used to remedy the issues caused and even to fund user-driven innovation. As for how to enable a mechanism that roots out non-compliance and applies a penalty, charge-back methods can work quite easily. For instance, business units that are running old software are sometimes charged a premium against their P&L, as incentive to upgrade. Similar penalties could be applied to DARC software.

Partnering with LOBs

IDC believes that partnering with lines of business to regulate and leverage shadow IT is the only viable solution to a problem that is getting worse year by year. IDC’s Moving from Shadow IT to IT-Business Joint Ventures report gives actionable advice for CIOs and can be implemented with assistance from the IDC Executive Advisory service.

The Bottom Line for CIOs

Completely eliminating shadow IT is neither feasible nor desirable. Instead of fighting it, CIOs should channel it, turning unsanctioned technology adoption into a structured, business-aligned innovation strategy.

By offering guidance, funding, and guardrails, IT can support business agility while reducing security, compliance, and cost risks.

Shadow IT is not the enemy — it is an opportunity. The question is: Will your IT organization embrace it strategically, or continue to resist the inevitable?

As self-service tools, low-code platforms, and “citizen developers” gain traction, IT organizations must shift toward the role of enabler, not gatekeeper. The future of IT leadership lies not in control, but in collaboration.