Five years ago, “shadow IT” efforts were the dirty little secret of organizations. An impatient marketing or finance manager would, on the sly, secure some extra budget money and hire a contractor to build a little database that tracked mailing addresses or top-line financials. Slowly but surely, as the little database grew bigger and bigger, the manager would wedge the cost into her operating budget. Other managers might take notice and started building their own databases. Then came the cloud, which only heightened frustration with IT’s lack of velocity in delivery, and managers flocked to outside vendors to automate various business processes, from customer relationship management to supply chain reporting to social media analytics.