Canopy, the Atos cloud, has found that 60% of CIO’s believe that shadow IT spending is more prevalent than ever.

It is estimated that spending on shadow IT cost €13m as a proportion of a company’s global IT budget in 2014.

Business decision makers echoed these figures, with 51% admitting that 5-15% of their departmental budget was being spent on shadow IT. The report states that these figures are expected to grow by over 20% in 2015.

The primary driver of the spending has been caused by a need for back-ups, with 44% of respondents admitting that their department had invested in this area in the last year.

Other areas that have created new shadow IT spending were found to be file sharing software (36%) and archiving data (33%).

Philippe Llorens, CEO of Canopy, said: "Surprisingly, shadow IT is being spent on back-office functions – areas which for most businesses should be centralised and carefully managed by the IT department."

"This finding shows that stronger governance is still required in most IT departments."

"As businesses embrace digital, it is essential that the IT department not only provides the IT infrastructure and services to enable and support the digital transformation but also the governance model to maximise cost efficiencies, manage risk and provide the business with secure IT services."

According to CIO’s, the biggest spenders on shadow IT were US companies, which are spending €26mn per company as a proportion of their 2014 global IT budget. This figure is more than double the amount spent by companies in the UK and France.

The report predicted that one of the big influencers on shadow IT spending would be improved mobility (37%). These figures were found to be higher in retail (44%), IT and telecoms (42%) and financial services (39%).

For 37% of respondents, the IT department’s inability to sanction short term pilots quickly enough and host product launches in time (34%) would be key causes for shadow IT investment.

For execs who work in the Utilities sector, sluggish IT departments were cited as a major driver for 61% of those surveyed.

Llorens, said: "As businesses become accustomed to operating at digital speed, using IT to enhance customer experience and top-line revenue opportunities, the IT department must be ready, both in terms of technology and governance, to support short term projects and accelerate the development of cloud native applications to improve service and increase customer spending."