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Yet another four-letter word is gripping the information technology. After BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) the latest four letter buzz is called social, mobile, analytics and cloud or SMAC in short.
Leading software vendors see an integrated SMAC to change the way companies do business in future.
The combined potential of SMAC technologies is estimated to be between $70 billion to $200 billion over the next three years. And, that's the reason why most of the software vendors today are betting on SMAC.
Research firm Gartner terms it as the nexus of four IT forces — cloud, social, mobile, and information (analytics). Those forces, along with the continued impact of consumer spending, have essentially set the stage for the next generation of capabilities.
Growth potential
According to Hyoun Park, Principal Analyst, Nucleus Research, a US-based research firm, business analytics increase return on investment substantially as the solution matures and is extended to handle ‘big data' beyond the firewall. This includes social media and partner ecosystems. An analysis of 60 deployments showed that an average ROI of 188 per cent in the initial automation phase grows to an average of 1,209 per cent in the later predictive phase.
While cloud computing provides the delivery of new capabilities, social collaboration is expanding the way in which people interact with one another and businesses. Beyond that, the use of mobile devices has extended the reach of users and their involvement with information from many sources.
R. Chandrasekaran, Group Chief Executive, Technology and Operations, Cognizant Technology Solutions, said that new technologies like cloud computing and social networks intersect with the ‘millennial' generation. Clients are looking for better ways to organise teams, cultivate innovation, allocate resources, and reinvent knowledge processes.
Cognizant added three more of its largest banking clients to the list of companies that consider Cognizant their preferred mobile solutions provider. One client also selected the company as a preferred social computing provider after it developed a social media command centre to monitor what their customers were saying about one of their subsidiary brands on the Internet.
While each of SMAC by themselves is high potential for businesses, the emergence of the integrated zone has completely changed how businesses are looking at enabling technology for business gain. In short, tomorrow's model for retail banking would be banking for a retail consumer that will guarantee a single experience across multiple channels – mobile, laptop, digital kiosk or a human teller, says Naresh Nagarajan , Senior Vice president & Head - Ecosystem Business Incubation, HCL Technologies Ltd.
The ability of consumers to experience and buy multiple products that a bank offers, all served onto the Point of Service devices using analytics drawn from social media such as Facebook / LinkedIn and Know Your Customer information stored on the cloud. This is an example of how SMAC as an integrated business paradigm is necessitating chief executives to look at these strategies.
Innovation issues
According to Sanjay Purohit, Sr. VP and Head of Products and Platforms, Infosys, customers are looking at taking advantage of SMAC to drive growth and accelerate their innovation agenda – whether to provide superior customer experience, reduce time to market, or drive efficiencies. Some clients are looking at each of these in isolation, but increasingly companies are looking at this holistically as they provide a multiplier effect on business. Infosys' offerings are aligned to the holistic view, he said.
SMAC are in many ways the foundation elements of the Infosys' ‘products, platforms and solutions' offerings. Infosys has already booked business of around $350 million that will be realized over the next four years. It has also invested in over 3,000 cloud experts who are now delivering over 140 engagements across industry verticals.
Wipro says that companies are in a hurry to adopt cloud. Verticals such as financial services, energy and utilities, retail, and even manufacturing, are seeing a surge in demand and customer inquiries.
Macroeconomic and business pressures are further driving enterprises to explore and adopt a cloud strategy, and benefit from the scalability, flexibility and capex control that cloud offers. Large Financial organizations are increasingly adopting the Private Cloud model, keeping in mind their security and regulatory demands.
According to an independent research firm, Cloud Computing represents a $52Bn worldwide market opportunity in 2012, and is projected to increase to more than $241Bn in 2020.
On analytics, Wipro said that it implemented its solution with a leading retailer in US to optimise its store operations. It was done by using analytical applications to do labour planning by factoring in ongoing campaigns, level of automation level beyond conventional parameters like historical of monthly sales and vacation.
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