One simple way to help prevent such problems, Walls says, is for business executives and the IT staff to actually get to know each other better so they work as a team and not as separate worlds.

"The business manager needs to have personal relationship with their IT managers and know them on a first name basis," Walls says. "They need to talk with them regularly. A business needs to know when an IT person is going off the rails and the only way to do that is to have personal relationships and know each other. IT people shouldn't be treated as a 'geek squad' at a separate table but as part of the company and part of the team."

covers Enterprise Applications, SaaS, CRM, and Cloud Computing for CIO.com. Follow Todd on Twitter . Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter and on . Email Todd at You can also join Todd in the "CIO Forum" group on to talk with CIOs and IT managers about the things that keep them up at night.