Keep on SMACking: Taking Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud to the Bottom Line

VOLUME 6 • ISSUE 1 2013
A bi-annual journal produced by Cognizant
XaaS, Code Halos, SMAC
and the Future of Work
The Last Word
Keep on SMACking: Taking Social, Mobile, Analytics and
Cloud to the Bottom Line

Keep on SMACking:
Taking Social, Mobile,
Analytics and Cloud to
the Bottom Line
Winning organizations have programs in place to identify, understand,
prioritize and overcome emerging SMAC challenges and have
established ‘Big Rules’ for business and IT leaders to work through
governance and technological roadblocks.
By Bruce J. Rogow
With all the hype and confusion about emerging information technologies, particularly social, mobile,
analytics and cloud (what we call the SMAC StackTM
), it is very easy to lose sight of the big picture and
its implications.
SMAC and a growing array of IT alternative delivery vehicles – such as software as a service (SaaS) and
business process as a service (BPaaS) – are the major tradewinds swirling into the enterprise at the same
time that industry structures and business architectures are changing. SMAC must be considered not as
a set of “cute things we can do” but as an enabler for a wider context of profound business and
technology transformation.
As industries change and new IT products and services emerge, businesses must adapt their IT
architectures and capabilities to take advantage of what can be sourced internally and through third
parties. These adaptations typically take 15 or more years, but leaders at winning organizations recognize
the stakes, scope and challenges early on. They blend new, changing and existing parts to ensure material
business contribution and increased competitiveness over the short-, mid- and long-term. In today’s SMAC
context, winners see and execute against the strategic shift amid business change.
Winners don’t wait for change to sort itself out or assume that they will succeed by continuing to do what
they have been doing, only more diligently. They try to take advantage of the short-term opportunities
afforded or demanded by the changing landscape and begin to work toward a scalable and iterative IT
vision as they connect the dots and lay a proper foundation.
● The Last Word
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44 COGNIZANTi https://connections.cognizant.com/
When navigating into new waters, such as we are, prudent executives will identify the key challenges and
adopt “Big Rules” to guide their efforts.
Lessons Learned So Far: Key Challenges
In times of major change, when business and IT platforms are being transformed, leading organizations
force themselves to pause from the day-to-day mayhem to identify primary strategic challenges and then
determine whether they present threat or opportunity. They use these as their radar and compass to keep
moving forward and avoid veering off course.
As originally described in more depth in my Cognizant Connections blog posts, the challenges I hear most
often from senior business leaders include:
● Keep your eye on the prize: Businesses face an imperfect storm of challenges, attempted
business model changes, new IT applications and evolving IT delivery mechanisms. It is
easy to focus on the shiny new thing. How do business leaders tackle necessary changes
that deliver traction at scale and impart positive business impact? Doing so requires
dedicated and qualified resources, the building of management platforms (similar to what
was done for PCs and minis), scalable support and deployment models, continuous
inspection, financial scrutiny and processes for refresh and maintenance.
● Manage the moving parts: The ordinary business of annual planning, budgeting, capital
allocations, application portfolio selections, governance structures and succession plans
can create a same-old, same-old rhythm. The current environment forces business and IT
leaders to reconsider all the moving parts of the evolving environment and the interchange
between them rather than just going through routine management processes. The
challenge centers on defining and organizing the moving parts (see Figure 1 for the most
common moving parts).
● Understand how consumerization changes the IT game: The IT organization is now
in a competitive market. Users want it now, at low acquisition cost and in an easily adopted
manner. Internal IT must provide and/or facilitate easily understood services rather than
complex technology brews, system development extravaganzas or rules that ignore these
new realities. Users have alternatives to internal IT. While your organization may restrict
external alternatives, this will likely change as competitors grow more agile as a result of
their greater reliance on quick-turn business capability and IT specialization.
● When going to the future, bring money or ﬁnd it: The changes to the business model,
SMAC and adoption of an IT as a service model will cost money. What percent of your IT
budget last decade was dedicated to PCs and distributed systems introduced in the last
great IT platform change? In tight economic times, there must be a balance between
creative innovation and intense scrutiny to harvest material economic benefit. It’s not good
enough to say that social media has enlarged our group of friends or that data analytics has
given us insight or that cloud-enabled collaboration has made our people more aware. As
While your organization may restrict
alternatives to internal IT, this will likely change
as competitors grow more agile as a result of
their greater reliance on quick-turn business
capability and IT specialization.

we heard in the movie Jerry Maguire, "Show us the money!” Real money will be needed to
fund the SMAC transformation.
● Fog and clouds … deal with it: Businesses and IT organizations face major ambiguity
and uncertainty at almost every level of operation. They get it that they must move ahead.
The challenge is determining exactly what needs to change and how to enable change. It
can be helpful to think in terms of plateaus of change. This requires a constant and
dedicated effort to re-examine what the next plateau may be, how to get there, how to
acquire that capability, who will make that happen and when it will be done. This process
must be performed for each chunk of the business and for the business as a whole. It is
foolhardy, for the foreseeable future, to wait for a universal solution.
● Life is a paradox ... deal with it: Business and IT organizations have been finely honed
to exacting processes and structured strategic objectives. Decisions and execution pivot
Master Industry
Structure
Master IT
Platform
Company’s Business
Architecture or Model
Company’s IT
Architecture
• Markets and
segments
• Market structures
• Competitors
and players
• Sovereigns
• Entrants
• Stakeholders
• Investors
• Buyers and
customers
• Channel structures
• Economics
• Capital structures
and sources
• Regulation and
legal
• Public policy
• IT industry structure
• Available technologies
• Available services
• Available tools
• Master providers
• Supporting providers
• Product maturity
• Product volatility
• Venture funding
• Provider investments
• Functions and price
points available
• Skills and support
available
• Products and services
offered
• Product and service
development
• Markets chosen
• Customer segments
• Channels and distribution
• Partners
• Marketing and
communications
• Financials
• Business processes
• Supply chains
• Capital sources and
structure
• Formal and informal
organization
• Intellectual capital
• Experience base
• Governance
• Culture and behavior
• Legacy systems and
technologies
• Evolving or needed
systems and
technologies
• Data and data quality
• Infrastructure and quality
• Technologies and
services chosen
(standards)
services inherited
services targeted
• IT skills and organization
• Sourcing
• IT processes
• Security and service
assurance
• Provider relationships
and management
• IT governance
• IT tools
The Many Moving Parts of IT-Business Transformation
Aligning business model innovation with evolving market requirements requires a good deal of
multidimensional planning and a recasting of fundamental IT assumptions. Here’s one way to organize
your thinking.
FIGURE 1

around governance, financial evaluation processes, standards, approval processes, risk
elimination, following tight rules and enforcing standards. What lies ahead is massive
uncertainty. How do organizations that have cleared all risk and uncertainty off the table
deal with massive ambiguity and paradox? As an example, how do they contend with the
demand for greater operational agility but also ensure better IT performance and security
on more diverse devices. What does that mean, what are the tradeoffs, and how do you do
it? This requires major changes to IT principles, decision-making, policies and governance.
● Lots of pieces are missing or relatively immature … deal with it: We are blessed
today with platforms, tools, vendors, applications, major skills or experience bases and
management approaches for managing the IT lifecycle from centralized through distributed
implementations. Entering the SMAC world, you find, at best, primitive support vehicles.
There is risk in moving ahead, but waiting for the rest of the support vehicle kit to arrive is
not prudent. Competitors may move ahead, and you will lack the years of experiential
learning required to take advantage of the new capabilities. This requires tiering your IT
investment and deployment into practical chunks and different approaches for short-, mid-
and long-term investments. Fully expect that many short-term IT and business capability
investments that can have major economic return will require scaffolding to tie into existing
systems and business processes. Many will need replacement or refreshment as the
capabilities become more robust and the business requirements change. An essential
expectation in the foreseeable timeframe is to invest short, get a significant short-term
return and allow for mid- to longer-term solutions.
● Villager unrest will only get worse: Senior executives, users, vendors, consultants and
academics will only step up their demands to accelerate the move to a future state. In many
cases, they may be clueless about the details or how to get there. IT must get in front of
this tsunami and programmatically help senior execs balance out their increasing
frustration with IT’s perceived lack of agility, flexibility, responsiveness and acceleration
abilities – as well as the Byzantine processes and pervasive shortage of proper skill sets –
against the risk of creating an unmanageable, overly complex and unsecure IT and business
capability mess.
The enterprises that are making the most sustained progress with SMAC and a services-enabled future
all have programs in place to identify, better understand, prioritize and deal with a similar list of
challenges as they see them.
Steering Through the Challenges
Most leading companies I visit tell me that many of their old policies, practices, resource allocations,
standards, organizational structures, incentives, measurements and governance policies do not
accommodate or actually hinder the direction in which they need/want to go. It is too early to lock in
replacements. To get beyond the on-ramp for business model change and SMAC, many are adopting a set
of interim guidelines, maxims or “Big Rules.”
Entering the SMAC world, you find, at best,
primitive support vehicles. There is risk in
moving ahead, but waiting for the rest of the
support vehicle kit to arrive is not prudent.

You don’t need all or even a majority of the Big Rules detailed in the checklist below. However, every one
missed makes your journey harder. The most common Big Rules include the following:
● For boards of directors:
> Obtain expertise and perspective: Add an IT-savvy executive or, better yet, a
proven CIO. If the board is full, create an IT advisory council for the board.
> Communicate, understand, review beyond the IT audit material: Ask for an
overall vision of how SMAC and the availability of outside services will impact oper-
ations, progress to date and mechanisms for change; request a semi-annual update.
> Ask the business leadership: As senior business executives present their plans
and progress in regular board sessions, don’t hesitate to ask questions, such as
whether IT adequately supports the business; where the missed opportunities are to
take advantage of the changes in outside services and SMAC; how your business
function or unit is taking advantage of technology or services; how the IT you pro-
vide to your staff and customers compares with that of your competitors; whether IT
enhances or detracts from the brand or customer experience.
● For CEOs and senior leadership teams:
> Set aside quality time: Sponsor sessions to produce SMAC visions, impacts and
plans from each business unit. Use these to provide the board an update as outlined
above or be better prepared for the board’s questions. This process and output may
be included within conventional business strategy efforts; however, special consid-
eration should be given to ensure that proper effort and quality time is allocated. A
board member of a distribution company recently told me that his board had award-
ed its CEO and her executive VPs with a, “We expect you to do much better” disap-
probation when it found that the senior leadership team had spent less than one
hour of quality time over the past year considering how IT could benefit the busi-
ness. Such a taunt from the board is one level below a no confidence or material lia-
bility on these critical issues.
> Turn ambiguity to advantage: Examine the issues of managing in ambiguous
times and provide a program for addressing the required organizational, incentive,
style and motivational changes required. Promote prudent risk-taking, as well as risk
assessment, abatement and tolerance.
> Expect, inspect and fund success: Demonstrate that consideration is being given
and steps taken to harvest the benefits afforded by SMAC and the provisions made
(i.e., budgeted) to support the changed environment. Recognize that SMAC and emerg-
ing alternative IT delivery vehicles are like “free puppies.” They are cheap and cute on
the front end, but they require funding, health checks, care and support over time.
> Build recognition that IT is becoming a part of or is already a major enabler
of the enterprise brand: Unless all these shiny new SMAC capabilities, services,
Recognize that SMAC and emerging alternative
IT delivery vehicles are like “free puppies.”
They are cheap and cute on the front end, but
they require funding, health checks, care and
support over time.

outside wonders and legacy systems can operate in a seamless and easily manage-
able fashion, the brand and business can be hurt rather than enhanced. Discipline is
still required.
● For better collaboration between business and IT leadership:
> Progression vs. succession plans: Move from perfunctory organization succes-
sion plans that replace like with like, to talent progression programs that identify,
acquire, develop and retain the talent needed going forward, both in the business
and IT.
> Learn to work backwards: Start with the desired outcome rather than what the
shiny new thing can do. Determine what it will take for the business and IT to
achieve the outcome. Early on, imagine or test the future-state operating environ-
ment being designed or considered to see if it will deliver the outcome. Rather than
adding on bells and whistles, try to focus on practicality from the operations, conver-
sion and integration perspectives. As an example, I keep hearing of “spectacular”
insights emerging from big data. When I ask what difference it has made in the
business, the typical response is that the analysis didn’t change anything. The
analyzers don’t have direct connection to the potential “happenators.”1
No one
had responsibility for the change, and the incentives and processes precluded
business changes.
> Establish the progress corridors and platforms: Break down the hardened silos
that have developed in IT and the business. Deal with the issues of personal or
departmental hoarding. Restructure attitudes and expectations, as well as organiza-
tional and horizontal awareness and process flows around the services and out-
comes to be delivered.
● For IT leadership working with their teams:
> Refresh 20-year-old IT principles: For many organizations I visit, it has been many
years and IT galaxies since the IT principles and maxims were articulated. Adapt the IT
and enterprise architecture principles and IT governance to properly support and com-
municate how IT is to operate (the IT Big Rules) for this new environment.
> Update the IT what, how, who and when: Adapt the IT management model and
organization to identify, articulate, source and deploy, assure and secure, refresh,
steward and orchestrate the opportunities afforded by available services and SMAC,
globally.
> Upgrade technical infrastructure architecture to a modern, full enterprise
architecture: Produce and implement a foundational enterprise architecture that is
not just about solution brokerage and deployment but that starts and ends with
what it takes to ensure, refresh, operate and orchestrate the exceedingly complex IT
environment of the future. This includes mobility, BYOD (or don’t BYOD), apps (public
Move from perfunctory organization succession
plans that replace like with like, to talent
progression programs that identify, acquire,
develop and retain the talent needed going
forward, both in the business and IT.

and private), public cloud, private cloud, hybrids, legacy, infrastructure as a service
(IaaS), BPaaS, social media, unified and not-unified communications, software-
defined networks, extreme virtualization, multimedia, video, big data, the Internet of
things and security threats we can only begin to imagine.
> Find the funding: Establish the vehicles to test and pay for all that the evolving
environment will require. Users want the free puppies, but IT organizations are find-
ing they come with a 15% to 30% annual carrying or support cost. A mechanism to
fund this needed support must be developed.
> Focus IT on core contribution: Begin the transformation from a deliverer and
operator of IT systems into a facilitator of IT merchandising, service brand manage-
ment and service assurance.
This checklist is just a start. Please add your advice to my blog on Cognizant Connections. I’ll be adding
to these and exploring them in more depth as we all learn more about taking SMAC to the bottom line.
Footnote
1
A “happenator” is the person absolutely responsible and accountable for ensuring that the change
happens and does so with passion. For more detail, see Cognizanti Journal, Volume 5, Issue 1.
Bruce J. Rogow is a Principal at IT Odyssey and Advisory in Marblehead, Mass. Known as the counselor
to CIOs and CEOs on IT strategy, Bruce has for the last 15 years conducted independent, face-to-face
interviews with over 120 IT executives annually. Previously, he spent five years as Executive Vice
President and Head of Research at Gartner Inc. Prior to that, he was Senior Managing Principal at Nolan,
Norton & Co. Bruce can be reached at Bruce@ITOdyssey.com.

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