SMAC

Social, Mobility, Analytics, Cloud

Embracing new Technologies for Future Business

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The increase in pace of change is rapidly driving customers, businesses and technology firms in
a tight belief, with the convergence of innovative technologies eroding the boundaries separating
them. Businesses are able to progress more easily & quickly, with help of technologies such as
social media, mobility, analytics and cloud computing,which are coming together to explore
unlimited opportunities for everyone. This convergence also known as SMAC will be
leading the business-technology ecosystem in future.
Technology vendors will have to change their way they are structured to deal with SMAC. They
need to be agile, and think on their feet. Rather than being just bureaucratic organizations,
technology vendors will be creating an entrepreneurial culture, along with the next generation
delivery and pricing models, that will help in realizing the maximum potential from SMAC.
Businesses will also need to look at inorganic strategies to add to their capabilities in some of
these areas. Technology vendors should seek to work close with their consumers to stay aware of
latest technological developments, and come up with the solutions that can take advantage of
SMAC. They should seek for customer input more attentively while innovating / developing
solutions and products. The emphasis should be on taking inputs from various channels,
mediums and devices and using them as critical inputs for new solutions and innovations.

Social media

Social media refers to the channel of interactions among people in which they create ,share and
shuffle different ypes of information and ideas in a diverse world of virtual communities and
social networks.social media strategy has become must for all firms, wether its bank, retailers
or the government. Social media depend on mobile and web-based technologies to create highly
interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and
modify user-generated content. With more than one billion individuals logged on to different
social networks, people are using social media for taking advice on what products to buy, where
to shop and even regarding to what fims they want to work with. While most firmss use social
media for their customer service functions only,today many fims have started using social
media in their sales and marketing functions. This in turn enables business fims to use the data
generated by the different consumers effectively to service larger pools of consumers.

Mobility
Mobile devices have changed the way people access digital content in todays world.
Smartphones and tablets have already brought rich, digital content to the fingertips of consumers.
Mobile banking has emerged as one of the most innovative products in the financial services
industry.Today Shoppers are increasingly using their mobile devices for everything from
browsing to comparing to buying products. Governments are also reaching out to their citizens,
using mobile devices as an effiient channel. Firmss must also jump on to the mobile applicaton
bandwagon, and ensure that their business applications are mobile ready.

Analytics

Every year, companies and individuals are generating billions of gigabytes of data. Data, which
is properly analyzed and used in time, which can emerge as an unbeatable competitive
advantage. Firmss need to recognize what the prospect analytics represents and should adapt
their IT strategy to capture such wonderful opportunities. Analytics can help the retailers predict
buying decisions of consumers; it can help banks to read out fraudulent transactions; while
governments can use these analytics techniques to provide services directly to their citizens.
Predictive analytics has also been adopted across various industries in various scenario building
activities.

Cloud computing

The undeniable power of cloud computing to speed up innovations and improve productivity in
business is now accepted by both IT vendors and their various consumers. While the financial
services and government sectors are mostly moving to a private cloud model due to information
security concerns, other industries like healthcare and retail have adopted public cloud for
business growth. Moreover, their existing infrastructure has helped todays telecom players to
emerge as providers of cloud computing, leading to erosion in boundaries between IT and
telecom vendors.

UNDERSTANDING THE FIRMS OF TOMORROW

What will the firms of the future look like..??

Modern corporations have become an ubiquitous institution in todays world, with
millions of adults working for one. Whenever we head to the supermarket or the
shopping mall, whenever we travel by car or plane or train, whenever we invest for
retirement or go to the movies, we operate in markets dominated by big business.
Through expenditures on research and development, firmss have generated new
technologies and new products, which in turn often trigger far-reaching social and cultural
transformations. There is simply no way to make sense of the last 150 years of world
history without a solid understanding of the firms1
Firmss have undergone revolutionary changes in the way they operate over the past few decades.
Todays firmss bear little resemblance to their counterparts from the 20th century, both in the
way they operate, as well as the consumers they serve.
Technological changes, as well as changes in the marketplace have been the primary drivers for
the changing firms2.The advent of the digital age over the past two decades has accelerated the
velocity of change in firmss across the world. The evolutionary
process of change has been transformed into a revolutionary change process. Firmss, as
well as their consumers and suppliers have been impacted to varying degrees in the digital age3.
While an individual might think of the present as the zenith of the digital age, experts believe the
best is yet to come4. The disruptive technologies of today Social media, mobility, analytics and
cloud computing3 will act as enablers to the next generation of technological trends, which will
surpass todays technology in scale, complexity and impact on the world around us.

THE FOUR PILLARS OF SMAC

The emergence of new technologies over the past few years has resulted in a transformational
change in the world around us. From the rise of social media with its over 1 billion subscribers
worldwide, to the ubiquitous spread of mobile phones and the resulting explosion of big data and
big analytics, the world around us is changing faster than any one of us could ever imagine. Add
to this the ever expanding presence of cloud computing in our life, and were probably
witnessing the zenith of the technological age.
Social Media

Social Media
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare the new way how businesses and individuals are
connecting with each other, globally. Firmss are increasingly leveraging social media for
customer engagement and brand
building, as more and more individuals are becoming active Internet users and using social
media. Further, the
proliferation of smart devices and increasing mobile internet usage has supported the growth of
active Internet
users.
Social media platforms are not only restricted to the social networking sites such as Facebook
and LinkedIn, rather extended to various forms of social media including YouTube, blogs, social
bookmarking, geo-location sites, and daily deals. As the social media modes differ, so their
application and priority from business to business. Moreover, changing business dynamics
influences firms decision to select a social media platform.
While daily deals lost its position, platforms like YouTube continues to be top preference of
businesses followed by Facebook, blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter. 28 YouTube is the chart topper,
however, collectively Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter signifis the importance of social
networking in the social media world. Moreover, collectively the social
networking sites nearly reach one in four, globally. The social network users are expected to
reach 1.73 billion this year, an 18 percent increase from 2012 driven by rising adoption in
emerging countries.

Social Media in India

Following the global trend, Indians Internet users are also increasingly using social media, which
in turn is providing opportunities for firmss to leverage social media strategy for engaging with
consumers, brand building, product launches and for knowing their consumers. The social media
usage is primarily driven by the rising number of active Internet users, who are accessing
Internet through host of devices. The mobile Internet users in the country are expected to grow
from 4.1 million users in 2009 to 164.8 million in 2015 at a CAGR of 85 percent

Mobility
Mobile devices have changed the way people access digital content. Smartphones and tablets
have brought rich, digital content to the fingertips of consumers. Shoppers are increasingly using
their mobile devices for everything from browsing to comparing to buying products.
Governments are also reaching out to their citizens, using mobile
devices as an effiient channel. Firmss must also jump on to the mobility bandwagon, and ensure
that their applications are mobile ready
Spread of BYOD: As more and more smartphones, tablets and other devices fid their way into
the hands of employees, the demand to use them at work will intensify. This trend will only
accelerate in the years to come, and more and more firmss are adopting a formal Bring Your
Own Device (BYOD) policy . Employees are engaging in multiple work-related activities using
their mobile devices; the three key activities include:
a. Reading or viewing documents, spreadsheets, or presentations
b. Tablets are often used for analytics and modeling as well as to access web meetings and
videoconferences
c. Accessing email, calendar, and intranet or employee portal sites lead the way for both devices
The concept of BYOD is playing an important role in enhancing productivity, agility, employee
satisfaction and retention in the firms. With the proliferation of employee owned devices,
ubiquitous information access and the growing influence of CXOs in technology decisions, CIOs
need to strike a balance between user expectations and firms requirements and institutionalize
governance to secure business information while enhancing

Mobility scenario in India

India has emerged as the second largest mobile market globally, behind only China. With over
870 million mobilesubscribers , businesses are jumping on to the mobile opportunity. Moreover,
the nation has also emerged as the third-largest smartphone market (by shipments) . Both
consumers and business buyers in India continue to harbor an aggressive appetite for mobile
devices, adding to the already large collection of devices that are still in active use. Rising focus
on the mobile web platform is affecting a number of business aspects, including ecommerce
spending and online advertising. Mobile devices can also play a vital role in increasing financial
inclusion in the country, as well as the spread of education in rural areas .

Analytics
Companies have always kept large amounts of information. While its true that the amount of
data in the world keeps growing, the real change has been in the ways that we access that data
and use it to create value. Today, you have technologies like Hadoop, for example, that make it
functionally practical to access a tremendous amount of data, and then extract value from it. The
availability of lower-cost hardware makes it easier and more feasible to retrieve and process
information, quickly and at lower costs than ever before17. It is the convergence of several
trendsmore data and less expensive, faster hardwarethats driving this transformation. The
concept of analytics has been around for decades for fims that have been handling tons of
transactional data over the years even dating back to the mainframe era. The world is moving
from Traditional analytics to Predictive analytics and now increasingly towards Prescriptive
analytics (where the decisions are driven by predictive models using
business rules engines to help the companies to decide the next best action).
The recent spurt in demand for analytics (as well as big data) can be attributed to two main
factors3:
Convergence of computing technologies: Analytics is the natural result of four major global
trends: Moores Law (which basically says that technology always gets cheaper), mobile
computing (that smart phone or tablet
in your hand), social networking (Facebook), and cloud computing. Moreover, traditional data
management and analytics software and hardware technologies, open-source technology, and
commodity hardware are merging to create new alternatives for IT and business executives to
address this next generation of analytics
.
Exponential increase in data: Large volumes of transactional data have been around for
decades for most big fims, but the flod gates have now opened with more volume , and the
velocity and variety the three Vsof data that has arrived in unprecedented ways18.

Analytics scenario in India

The usage of analytics is still at nascent stage as far as Indian businesses are concerned. While
some industries like banking and telecom have started adopting analytics to get ahead of the
competition, several factors have inhibited
its growth. Indias largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel has been one of the foremost adopters
of analytics, analyzing usage and charging patterns with the help of predictive analytics. Airtel
works extensively with IBM for its analytics requirements. Its latest campaign, 'My Airtel My
Offer', is based on customer analytics - every day, the company comes up with a customized plan
for its consumers based on their usage. It has been most effective with users who hold dual SIM
cards and who decide to go with Bharti based on the offer they get on a
given day21.

Cloud computing
Cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing resources over the Internet
which can be shared. Rather than keeping data on your own hard drive , cloud
computing uses Internet, to store data at another location. Doing so may give rise
to certain privacy implications as well.Cloud Computing in the todays evolving technology

world is increasingly becoming famous among firms for its known benefis such as cost
effectiveness, agility, and less capital intensive technology. With these benefis cloud computing
has not been restricted for the use of firmss, its reach has extended with consumerization with the
launch of various applications from a host of IT service providers. Cloud computing history trail
from the era of mainframe computing, however, the latest form of the technology what we see
today, started to emerge with the proliferation of Internet. In 1999, the arrival of Salesforce.com
was one of the key milestones in the cloud computing history, which
pioneered the concept of delivering firms applications via a simple website. The in 2002,
Amazon Web Services launched a suite of cloudbased services including storage, computation,
and human intelligence. Since then the space has seen a signifiant increase in the number of
cloud service providers with a host of solutions
for different layers of the information technology ecosystem.
Cloud computing services are provided through public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud
environments wherein public cloud services have a larger pie of the total market owing to their
easy availability, accessibility, and low cost of adoption. Per Gartner, the public cloud services
market is expected to grow 18.5 percent in 2013 to a reach USD 131.0 billion from USD 111.0
billion in 2012. The growth is driven by the emerging segment of Infrastructure-as-a-Service
(IaaS), which includes cloud compute, storage and print services. IaaS segment is expected to
grow 47.3 percent in 2013 to reach USD 9.0 billion. 2

Cloud computing scenario in India

The public cloud computing in India is forecasted to grow 36 percent in 2013 to total US$443
million, up from US$326 million in 2012. On the contraryto global market, SaaS is the leading
segment in India with a share of 36 percent in 2012, followed by the cloud business process
services segment (BPaaS) which is the second-largest market segment after SaaS, comprising 23
per cent of the total market in 2012 in India. 24 Globally, dominating cloud advertising market is
less prevalent in the country had a 12 percent share in 2012 in the Indian public cloud services
market.