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