CIOs face a scary reality. They only know about 5-10% of the cloud applications that are being used within their organization. This shadow IT is ripping holes in their security strategies. In fact, a recent Forrester study cited that 43% of respondents said they believed shadow IT practices were major threats to their respective organizations. And, as the fallout from recent high-profile attacks have shown, both IT and business leaders will face the consequences if a security breach occurs. 

To help leaders uncover shadow IT, we launched Cloud Consumption Assessment Service in January. But discovering shadow IT is only the first step that organizations need to take to manage cost and risks. Moving to cloud compels customers to build in-house cloudsandlearn to broker services from public cloud providers.

In my last blog, I outlined the need for customers to implement a new lifecycle approach for managing cloud-one that implements the processes and tools to govern cloud services from end-to-end across public, private, and hybrid clouds. Many organizations are beginning to set up dedicated organizations to manage and govern cloud adoption. Recently, the BBC set up a group composed of IT delivery team, security architects, lawyers, infrastructure experts and user communities to manage the purchase and use of cloud computing in their organization.

Establishing a new approach to managing clouds requires a big change. In my conversations with CIOs and IT leaders, many share that they lack the know-how, processes, and tools to effectively manage public, private, and hybrid cloud services.

To help customers deal with these challenges, we are introducing Cisco Cloud Consumption Optimization Service. This annual subscription service helps customers govern their cloud adoption from end-to-end and continually monitor cloud use.

Our cloud experts will help customers establish policies, processes, and tools to govern cloud services based on Cisco IT's experience of managing more than 1,000 cloud providers. Throughout the year, we will help organizations implement policies to manage cloud providers and enforce security and compliance, develop their hybrid cloud service strategy including a technology and budgetary roadmap, set up a cloud program office, establish a approved vendor list, and more.

With this service, IT can rapidly evolve into a broker of cloud services internally. By doing so, organizations can launch cloud service faster and meet the needs of business groups. Additionally, the service can help organizations reduce cloud costs more than 10-15 percent, manage business risks and ensure regulatory compliance, and continually monitor cloud services and spot trends over time.

You can learn more about Cloud Consumption Optimization Service at: www.cisco.com/go/cloudconsumption