Shadow system

Shadow system is a term used in information services for any application relied upon for business processes that is not under the jurisdiction of a centralized information systems department. That is, the information systems department did not create it, was not aware of it, and does not support it. Shadow system is a term used in information services for any application relied upon for business processes that is not under the jurisdiction of a centralized information systems department. That is, the information systems department did not create it, was not aware of it, and does not support it. Shadow systems (a.k.a. shadow data systems, data shadow systems, shadow information technology, shadow accounting systems or in short: Shadow IT) consist of small scale databases and/or spreadsheets developed for and used by end users, outside the direct control of an organization's IT department. The design and development process for these systems tends to fall into one of two categories. In the first case, these systems are developed on an adhoc basis rather than as part of a formal project and are not tested, documented or secured with the same rigor as more formally engineered reporting solutions. This makes them comparatively quick and cheap to develop, but unsuitable in most cases for long term use. In the second case, the systems are developed by experienced software developers that are not part of the organizations's information systems department. These systems may be off-the-shelf software products or custom solutions developed by contract programmers. FinLab and IT Works are examples of companies that produce off-the shelf shadow systems. Depending on the expertise of the developers, these solutions may exceed the reliability of those created by the organizations's information systems department.