Box CEO Aaron Levie says he doesn’t like it when his 1,400 employees use technologies that the company hasn’t standardized on, a rich irony considering the collaboration software maker spent its formative years ducking and dodging CIOs on its way into corporations. It was a frank admission from a CEO whose company has perhaps become the poster-child for shadow IT, the phenomenon in which employees or business units purchase software and devices without the consent of IT.
“I’m like the biggest anti-shadow IT person at the company,” Levie said at the Technology Business Management Conference here Tuesday. “I hate when people bring in their own applications.” He told the audience — comprised mostly of CIOs from large companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Aon and Verizon — that he didn’t want corporate data shared in platforms that weren’t approved for use at the company.
