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Social, mobile, cloud converging

Joanne Carew
By Joanne Carew, ITWeb Cape-based contributor.
Johannesburg, 03 Aug 2012

Social, mobile, cloud converging

Social media, cloud computing, mobile technology and the ubiquity of information are converging to form a “nexus of forces” that will build on and transform user behaviour, creating business opportunities as it grows, according to a report from IT research firm Gartner, eWeek writes.

As the consumerisation of IT, a result of the availability of excellent devices, interfaces and applications with minimal learning curves, drives the use of these four realms, together they are revolutionising business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders, the report said.

The availability of information, which is increasingly stored in cloud environments where it is accessible by a wide range of devices, is the connective tissue that binds this nexus of forces, as it drives social, mobile and cloud technologies to allow anywhere, any time access to content.

Companies that are able to harness the power of ubiquitous information and disseminate that information across social, mobile and cloud platforms will find themselves with an edge over competitors, the report states.

According to Thomson Local, the study found that the social component has been having a profound effect on the way people work.

Commenting on the findings, Chris Howard, managing VP at the firm, explained that information provides context for the delivery of enhanced experiences on mobile devices and social platforms.

"Social links people to their work and each other in new and unexpected ways," he added.

Mobile computing is forcing the biggest change to the way people live since the automobile, said Gartner; as mass adoption forces new infrastructure, it spawns new businesses, and threatens the status quo, Business Cloud 9 reports.

However, mobile doesn't stand alone as an isolated phenomenon, as the firm forecasts people will interact with multiple screens working in concert.

According to Gartner, without cloud computing, social interactions would have no place to happen at scale, mobile access would fail to be able to connect to a wide variety of data and functions, and information would still be stuck inside internal systems.

The time is now for technologists to take full advantage of information, said the firm. Knowing how to capture the power of the ubiquity of information and utilise the smaller subsets applicable to a company, a product and customers, at a specific point in time, will be critical to new opportunities and for avoiding risks.

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