Published on the 05/03/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

Back in 2012 Gartner forecast that by 2017 the chief marketing officer would spend more on IT than the chief information officer. Driven by high expectations about cloud computing, and the ability of business executives to buy point IT solutions on the corporate credit card, Gartner’s prediction led to fierce debate about the rise of “shadow IT” and the need for “bi-modal IT” where IT managed core infrastructure and architecture and worked with the business to deploy point solutions as required.

Gartner stressed the need for a bi-modal approach last year, which allowed CIOs the opportunity to carve up time and budget to manage both core infrastructure and fast-changing business demands. Gartner’s analysis showed that 45 percent of CIOs already operated some form of bi-modal approach, and that this would grow to 75 percent by 2017.

While that trend has continued, Australian CIOs at least think they have a bit more time up their sleeves before they lose the majority of their spending clout to other business executives.

Telsyte’s Australian Digital Workplace Study 2015 which was released this week suggests that around half of all CIOs believe line-of-business spending on IT would outstrip IT’s own IT budget within five years. At present however the central IT function controls more than A$7 out of every A$10 spent on enterprise IT.

Australian IT departments are however seeing their colleagues investing in IT directly. According to survey respondents almost four out of five Australian organisations (79 percent) have at least one line of business – including marketing, operations and finance – with its own IT budget.

According to Telsyte analyst Rodney Gedda: “This is up five percent from 2014 and shows a growing demand for IT services from areas of the business, like marketing. Combine this with more accessible cloud-based applications and the CIO has another information management procurement channel to deal with.”