Application Portfolio Management (APM) Best Practices

Overview

Cloud platforms have made shadow IT dramatically easier to create and harder to detect than on-premises shadow IT. A business unit can provision a cloud account, deploy a complete application stack, and generate significant monthly spending without any interaction with the central IT organization. Unlike on-premises shadow IT, which requires physical hardware procurement that creates natural visibility opportunities, cloud-based shadow IT requires only a credit card and a cloud account that can be opened in minutes. The resulting applications operate outside security governance, compliance oversight, cost management, and architectural standards - creating financial, security, and operational risks the organization cannot manage because it does not know they exist.

Best Practice

Establish cloud account governance that makes cloud-based shadow IT visible and brings it under portfolio governance. Implement a cloud account registry tracking every cloud account associated with the organization regardless of which unit or individual opened it. Configure cloud cost management tooling to aggregate spending visibility across all accounts and flag accounts not associated with a known, governed portfolio application. Establish an organizational policy requiring registration and governance approval before new cloud accounts are opened and specifying the discovery and disposition process for shadow cloud accounts identified through monitoring. Apply the same disposition assessment used for on-premises shadow IT - bring under governance, migrate to a governed alternative, or terminate - based on business value, security risk, and compliance posture.

Benefit(s)

Cloud account governance makes cloud-based shadow IT visible and governable rather than allowing it to operate as an invisible and growing source of organizational risk and untracked cost. Unknown security exposures in ungoverned cloud environments are surfaced and addressed. Unknown cloud spending is quantified and either brought under governance or eliminated. The organization develops cloud governance discipline that scales with the pace of cloud adoption rather than perpetually lagging behind the rate at which cloud resources can be provisioned without central oversight.