SMAC-leading a way to
Business Transformation
SMAC is throwing up huge
opportunities as firms want to optimize investments in current technology and
drive growth by using digital technologies and platforms. The digital forces of
social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) will reach mainstream status in 2014
and create requirements, drive new purchasing and establish new competitive
realities. Only when social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies are
implemented as a stack, and applied to key processes, will meaningful results
then follow. Mobility, analytics and social media created new revenue
opportunities and business lines to create differentiation in the market.
Increasing adoption of cloud computing has pushed Indian IT players to devise
the core value propositions and delivery models. With increase in Social networking by a widening base of
mobile/tablet users presents opportunities for analytics enabled by cloud
computing Mobile devices are a platform for effective social
networking and new ways to work Analytics
(Big Data) helps gain meaningful insights
from the information, facilitating informed decision making Cloud enables delivery of information and functionality to users and systems.
SMAC Stack – A Step
Change Driving Exponential Growth in Computing Devices and Data
Today’s SMAC Stack-‘the
fifth wave’ of IT architecture-is happening faster than anything that’s come
before. By 2020, as many as 100 billion computing devices will be connected to
the Web, and corporations will be managing 50 times the data they do currently.
So SMAC will have a multiplying effect on businesses and increase productivity
across the organization.
In all industries across the
business landscape, the SMAC Stack is eroding the century-old blueprint of
value chains and spawning new, highly distributed, virtualized business models.
The power of this technology platform is in treating it as a stack, for its
components have a multiplying effect when they work in combination. As an
example, retailers are strategically deploying the SMAC Stack across key
business processes to combine the best of virtual and physical shopping
experiences.
Today’s
SMAC Stack Masters Pave the Way
The power of
disruptive business models such as those pioneered by Facebook, Apple, Netflix,
Amazon, Google, etc. originates from managing SMAC technologies as an
integrated stack and fundamentally enabling business models by using this
integrated technology stack. For example, when selecting a book on Amazon,
buyers are presented with recommendations, based on analytics and very
sophisticated algorithms. Once chosen, the book is served up from “the cloud”
to a mobile reader of choice for instant enjoyment. Afterwards, if so
motivated, the buyer can then recommend the book to their social network.
Emerging
SMAC stacks Solution Areas
The SMAC stack can
transform the interactions with your key constituents, so these are the first
places to look. The four primary areas are:
1. The customer
interface: Next-generation marketing, selling and servicing.
2. The machine
interface: Seizing advantage with Smart Products and the Internet of
Things.
3. The partner
interface: Collaboration and co-creation of products and services.
4. The employee
interface: Mastering the new management process in the social enterprise.
In the same manner
that the “ERP,” “CRM” and “HRM” categories were created 20 years ago as key
solution areas for the client/server stack, we believe four key SMAC stack
solution areas are quickly crystallizing. The SMAC stack, if applied
holistically, can help organizations unbundle tightly-coupled, industrial-age
value chains and transform business, if not entire markets, creating boundary
less ways of working.
According to the Indian Brand Equity
Foundation (IBEF), Indian IT vendors are expected to generate USD 225 billion
from SMAC-related revenue by 2020 of the USD 1 trillion global opportunities.
Cloud represents the largest opportunity under SMAC, increasing at a CAGR of
about 30 per cent to USD 650-700 billion by 2020, followed by social media,
which will offer a USD 250 billion market opportunity by 2020.
Shaileja Pagare
Class of 2015