CII report pegs SMAC worth $225 bn

CHENNAI, INDIA: Social media, mobility, analytics and cloud computing (SMAC) technologies offer $225 billion business opportunity for Indian information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, states a research report released here.

According to the report "The SMAC Code - Embracing New Technologies for Future Business" prepared by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with KPMG, SMAC technologies enables enterprises to leverage the cloud (delivery of computing resources as services over the internet) for storing huge amounts of data generated over social media and analyse the same to derive business advantage.

The report was released by P. Thangamani, minister for industries, Tamil Nadu, at the 12th edition of Connect 2013 annual conference and exhibition on information, communication technology (ICT) organised by CII and Tamil Nadu government.

SMAC is considered to be a multi-billion dollar opportunity, globally for the IT-BPO vendors.

The enterprises are increasingly adopting these technologies, as they become more agile with information sharing within organisation and seek more insights about their customers to serve them better.

Citing industry estimates the report states that the world information and communication technologies (ICT) spending will reach the $5 trillion mark by 2020 driven by the combination of social media, mobility, analytics, and cloud.

The report observed that social media would help IT-BPO firms capitalise on the growth generated by the increasing usage of social media by consumers and businesses.

It said there are over 4.5 billion mobile subscribers and over 2.5 billion internet users, and the world has already entered the post-digital era.

There are over one billion social media subscribers globally, who are already disrupting traditional models of marketing and selling.