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Monday, July 14, 2014

What do SMAC and RGB have in common?


According to Wikipedia: “the RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors”.
So, what do colors have to do with the latest business and technology trends: social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC)?
Well, like in the RGB color model, where its primary additive colors (red, green, and blue) can be combined to reproduce other colors; the SMAC technologies - social, mobile, analytics, and cloud - when combined can produce business value beyond the “primary value” inherent to a single SMAC technology.

Primary value of Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud

Social, mobile, analytics, and cloud definitions vary and so could the definitions of what their primary values are. These are some SMAC primary values I regularly come across:
  • Social: a collection of user generated data which can describe the user. A generalized user profile: preferences (likes), “people like me” (connections), recommendations (convincing power – word of mouth)
  • Mobile: beyond ubiquitous user access, mobile can provide real-time information which can be used to describe the user context (device, location, time of day, etc.). The device can also be used to assert user identity (e.g. in a three-factor authentication: something you know, something you have, something you are). Please note that the concept of mobile is being generalized by the Internet of Things (aka, ubiquitous or pervasive computing) and wearables.
  • Analytics: the capability of amassing a never ending (big data) collection of all events and data related to interests of self, friends, and “people like me”; cross-referencing it all to identify (previously hidden) interesting and actionable patterns.
  • Cloud: the capability to provide infinite (scalable) and uninterrupted (redundant and reliable) capacity. It is about the "ilities". There is also the aspect of integrating (e.g. with iPaaS) personal and enterprise services from public, private, and hybrid clouds.

The full value of SMAC

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. ― Aristotle
So, how can an organization tap into the full value of SMAC? By extending the "primary value" of one or more SMAC components to empower the others, creating "combined values". Here are examples of possible combined values:
  • Social empowered by:
    • Mobile: enriched user experience based on user context (device, location, time of day, etc.) and external factors (events nearby, friends, planned activities, promotions).
    • Analytics: suggestions based on previous experiences from self, friends, and “people like me”.
    • Cloud: ability to seamlessly integrate access to personal (public cloud) and enterprise (private cloud) realms to derive value (interesting outcomes).
  • Mobile (IoT) empowered by:
    • Social: ability to adjust (IoT) behavior based on those of similar/followed individual/interests.
    • Analytics: learn and improve (IoT) behavior overtime, based on historical data, and upcoming events (e.g. weather, schedule, etc.).
    • Cloud: ability to integrate and automate a user's IoT devices by harnessing cloud resources.
  • Analytics empowered by:
    • Social: enrich decision and predictive processes by adding social data (likes, behaviors, etc.).
    • Mobile: make decisions/suggestions based on the user's “IoT footprint” (devices).
    • Cloud: pervasive analytics capability available to individuals as well as organizations.
  • Cloud empowered by:
    • Social: ability to detect viral behavior and scale resources ahead of time, avoiding service degradation.
    • Mobile: minimize costs by re-deploying assets to match a constantly changing geographic user (IoT) footprint/profile.
    • Analytics: ability to scale and minimize costs based on historical and predictive data.
What do social, mobile, analytics, and/or cloud mean to you? Do you agree with the primary values proposed? And which combined values might come to fruition in your opinion? Feel free to use the comment box below to share your experience and point of view. And please follow me, if you would like to be automatically notified when I publish new articles.





(Image courtesy of Wikipedia; Post updated July/6/2014)

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