CIO.com has a quite interesting article on how the Shadow IT favours the Chief Marketing Officer and their agenda, rather than the regular IT Manager or CIO.

Shadow IT is heavily supported by the growing consumerization of IT,

That is in fact the main issue with Shadow IT. It’s easy, cloud based, reachable via credit card and within reasonable budget for CMO’s to buy. After a while they might become a problem for the entire organisation because they a) don’t fit the IT structure, b) don’t have a common data architecture, c) they’re not interoperable with each other, d) it’s a PITA to manage after everyone’s on board.

The CMO, on the other hand, is thinking outside the box of CRM and ERP, and is excitedly testing new tech ideas and solutions to manage marketing’s top three challenges: growing profitable revenue; connecting with customers; and tackling serious competition

This is why Shadow IT happens. Someone is accelerating the business and normal IT can’t follow, so they overrun the status quo and build themselves what they need. Regular IT is always slow, not because they can’t work faster, but because they want to follow standards, rules and procedures for everyone and not a bunch of marketoids.

CMOs emerge better equipped with knowledge and understanding of business returns.

And that’s why the CMO will win the CIO/CTO. Because they fit business into technology and they can drive products and businesses, where the other just manage legacy. This isn’t new, in fact HBR was the first to put it straight: The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist