Shadow IT is nothing new as employees and lines of business bypass IT departments to get the cloud services they need to complete their jobs.   Rogue IT has resulted in a conversation around the unintended and potentially dangerous consequences of increased security risks, compliance concerns and hidden costs.

We all know that private and public clouds are here to stay, but in a recent study it was proven that the average enterprise organization is unaware of just how much shadow IT exists.

Cisco recently completed a study with large enterprise customers across the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia.   This study was conducted from January 2014 through July of this year.  Actual usage data was collected from customer's networks representing millions of users.

Ask your CIO today and they will probably respond that on average their organization is utilizing 51 cloud services.   Cisco's survey indicates that in reality, over 730 cloud services are being used.

That is 15 times what was believed and the survey statistics provide a trend that by the end of the year that will increase to 20 times more than was authorized.   That's more than 1,000 external cloud services per company.

To learn more about this study, read this thought leadership piece on CIO.com.

What's the answer?    Public cloud is a reality as well as private cloud.   The answer is: provide your business with choice and flexibility.   An effective hybrid cloud strategy that embraces both worlds in a way that drives efficiency and speed necessary for your business to maintain the three C's of your strategy:   choice, control and compliance.

Cisco delivers a choice of private cloud solutions tailored to the way you want to consume the technology.   Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite delivers a hybrid ready private cloud that securely extends into hybrid environments with your policies and compliance built into the automated workflows.   Think of this as adult supervision built-in without line of business or developers knowing about it.   Cisco Metapod delivers a public cloud experience in a private environment designed for agile development activities.

Lastly, Cisco Cloud Consumption Services can discover what cloud services you're currently using and protect your organization by reducing cloud risks and costs.   You'll gain a broad view of your organization's cloud usage and predict future cloud needs.    If you like, you can even try the service out for free for 30 days.

You can't control what you don't see.   Start with a cloud assessment analysis and provide senior leadership with the data to choose which applications should run in private or public clouds.   Evaluate Cisco's private cloud solutions that will provide secure connectivity into hybrid cloud environments without restricting line of business or developer efforts but keeping your organization safe and in control.