IT departments in India are being sidestepped by business leaders: VMware

IT departments in India are being sidestepped by business leaders but force to shoulder responsibility for things that go wrong, says The State of the Cloud 2016 report

The IT departments in India are being sidestepped by business leaders who adopt their own tech-strategy to innovate faster and meet growth objectives. At the same time, IT departments are left to shoulder responsibility for things that go wrong, said a VMware-commissioned study – The State of the Cloud 2016, conducted by Vanson Bourne.

The research found that enterprises in India face high levels of IT decentralisation, with more than 80% of local respondents – one of the highest in the Asia Pacific and Japan region – agreeing that the management and procurement of IT are taking place outside of IT’s purview, and driving up company costs.

According to the report, line of business leaders feel that IT is not moving fast enough to support the business and its drive for innovation. This has given rise to decentralisation and multi-cloud adoption, with line of business leaders in local firms purchasing an average of eight additional cloud services without consulting their IT departments.

Due to this decentralisation shift, IT departments in India are finding it difficult to manage multiple clouds, with almost three-quarters of local respondents agreeing that decentralisation increases their firms’ vulnerabilities to hacking and cyber-attacks (74%).

Overall, the research reinforced that decentralisation is causing IT’s job to become more challenging, by introducing a shift in expectations on how they should be supporting the business.

Almost nine in 10 respondents believe the IT department should be responsible for enabling other lines of business to drive innovation, but must set the strategic direction and be accountable for security and compliance.