Cloud broker makes it easier to control shadow IT
Connecting state and local government leaders
Gravitant's cloudMatrix offers continuous cloud asset discovery and sync capabilities to help agencies find unauthorized IT resources.
Gravitant is taking steps to make it easier for government agencies to find IT resources and services that might have been deployed without the oversight of the CIO or IT department.
Known as “shadow IT,” the practice typically involves personnel performing application development or production work via the Internet in an attempt to speed up the time it takes to complete a project because traditional IT process might have failed to meet their needs.
Agencies and enterprises are grappling with the issue of unbudgeted and unauthorized spending on IT resources — most often external cloud services — outside the CIO's oversight, according to Gravitant officials.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consulting firm, recently reported that as much as a third of spending on technology in an enterprise is shadow IT. Additionally, a recent Computer Science Corp. webinar featuring retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, highlighted the impact of shadow IT on the federal government.
Gravitant addresses shadow IT by adding continuous asset discovery and sync capabilities to its cloudMatrix brokerage platform, company officials said. The cloudMatrix platform has been deployed by several agencies in the state of Texas, and is the foundation for NJVC's Cloudcuity Management Portal, a multi-cloud broker service that lets agencies try, design and price an array of services from cloud providers before spending money and committing to large-scale migration.
The new cloudMatrix capabilities let CIOs and CFOs discover cloud assets used by their employees, as well as aggregate, link and govern them on an ongoing basis, Gravitant officials said. The functions also give users a single interface to manage multiple cloud accounts.
Additionally, CIOs can run alternate sourcing scenarios to determine how much is being spent on shadow IT. This information could result in alternate internal or external cloud providers being chosen to source the services. IT organizations can then offer the pre-approved cloud services to their employees while ensuring control over cloud assets.
Additionally, Gravitant plans to integrate more government-certified cloud providers into the cloudMatrix electronic services catalog to let government system integrator and service provider partners offer agencies an easy way to manage secure cloud service.