Cisco has announced a new service to help CIOs regain control of the company computing resources as shadow IT threatens to run rampant.

Its new Cloud Consumption as a Service (CCaaS) offering promises to discover and monitor public cloud computing usage, which grew at 112 per cent last year in large enterprises. With the average organisation now using 1,220 cloud services the position of chief information officer risks being undermined, as much of the information technology that companies use is now out of the CIO’s control, according to Cisco.

Cisco alleges that cloud services are now 25 times higher than the average CIO planned for, meaning that management is impossible. The launch of CCaaS will offer measure and monitoring, in order to help CIOs to manage what it describes as ‘the significant business risks associated with uncontrolled adoption of public cloud services’. These risks range from regulatory compliance and data protection, to business continuity, cost and service performance, it warns.

The main function of the service is to discover and continually monitor public cloud use across an organisation. When tempered with detailed analytics and benchmarking from Cisco, businesses could cut both their costs and security risks while making better future cloud service purchasing decisions.

New York based health care organisation CityMD, which acted a test user of the service, found that employees across its 50 sites were using 522 cloud services, while the IT department only supported 20.

“Our company was founded by doctors, so they want cloud services fast but now we have a better idea of what risks we may face,” said Robert Florescu, Information Technology VP at CityMD.

The Cisco Cloud Consumption as a Service is now available globally via qualified Cisco channel partners, prices start at $1 to $2 dollars per employee per month, depending on the size of the business.