Prediction 2015: Indian Organizations Will Move To The 3rd Platform Mobile Computing

Information technology is in a transformational stage today. New, powerful forces have emerged globally that are fundamentally changing how IT is conceived, bought, sold or deployed across enterprises of all sizes and industries.

It is not the first time that IT is being transformed like this, nor will it be the last. But perhaps for the first time in the history of computing, four mega trends are coming together to drive this transformation—mobile, cloud computing, big data and social networking.

The global impact of these forces can be appreciated just by looking at some key statistics. As many as 1.9 billion mobile phones will be sold by the end of this year as per Gartner estimates. More significantly, the share of smartphones in the overall mobiles tally is set to go up from 66% in 2014 to 88% in 2018. Cloud spending, including cloud services and the technology to enable these services, will surge by 25% in 2014, and reach over $100 billion, according to a forecast by IDC.

The numbers on big data and social networking are equally impressive. Even though a relatively new technology, big data, predicts AT Kearney, is set to attract global spending of $114 billion on hardware, software and services by 2018. And as for social, data compiled by social media agency ‘We Are Social’ (as of August 2014) points to the huge number of monthly active users on some of the most popular platforms: 1.32 billion on Facebook, 300 million on LinkedIn and 271 million on Twitter.

At the end-user level, the four mega trends of mobile, cloud, big data and social are driving customer expectations across all kinds of businesses—from the taxi-sharing service Uber and apartment-rental site Airbnb to video service Netflix and visual discovery site Pinterest.

For instance, the Uber mobile app helps travellers find a comfortable and convenient car ride whenever they want (rather than wait anxiously for a cab to pull up or respond to their shouts). Netflix makes it much easier and smoother for entertainment buffs to watch a movie or TV show at a time, place and device of their choice. These and many other businesses are leveraging the new technologies for the benefit of the consumers as well as for their own competitive advantage. At the enterprise level, heightened expectations and quick service possibilities—brought on by the rapid consumerisation of technology and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trends—are visibly and urgently transmuting the very DNA of enterprise IT. The slow pace of system provisioning and application rollout is giving way to agile resource allocation and rapid prototyping.

A new way of working in enterprise IT is emerging, necessitated by what research firm IDC calls the “3rd Platform”—a new platform for industry and enterprise innovation and growth that is built on a foundation of cloud, mobile, social, and big data technologies.

According to IDC, companies are building new sources of competitive advantage by creatively leveraging these four technologies. To fully comprehend the changes effected by these 3rd Platform technologies and to better engage with their customers, several organisations are undertaking digital transformation initiatives, a trend that is only going to accelerate over the next few years.

Indian enterprises, too, are well aware of these changing dynamics and are in different stages of their own IT-led transformation journeys.
A survey of 169 Indian IT professionals by EMC, which included CIOs, architects, data scientists IT managers and other decision makers, has revealed that 51% of the respondents are deploying one or more of the SMAC technologies to enhance customer experience (SMAC is gaining currency as a popular acronym for Social, Media, (Big Data) Analytics and Cloud computing). What’s more, a very high 91% of the respondents expect these next-generation technologies to give their organisations a competitive advantage.

The optimism among tech decision makers is high, but there is also a sense of apprehension and feeling of inadequacy when it comes to bringing the organisation up to speed in optimally embracing the 3rd Platform.

Besides a skills shortage, the challenge comes primarily from the sheer speed and scale of usage enabled by the new technologies. While the 1st platform (characterised by mainframe computers) touched millions of users with the number of applications in the low thousands, the 2nd Platform (characterised by client/server computing) involved hundreds of millions of users and tens of thousands of apps. What will define solution development and business innovation in the next couple of decades, however, will be the 3rd platform—which encompasses billions of users and millions of apps.

At the moment, the 2nd platform—around which most existing enterprise IT systems have been built and which has served the purpose until now—is in the process of being supplanted or subsumed by the SMAC-savvy 3rd platform. The need for enterprises is not just to look at one social solution here or an analytics tool there, but to truly weave together all the four strands of mobile, cloud, big data analytics and social media in a way that best suits their specific needs or industries. In this context, a trusted technology partner with deep expertise and a federated approach that offers choice and best-fit solutions can help them navigate the challenges—and make their respective transformational journey smooth sails rather than bumpy rides.

Image: thinkstock

The article is written by Rajesh Janey, President, India and SAARC EMC