The document discusses how the rise of new technologies like social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) are transforming businesses and entire industries in a major way. It calls this the "fifth wave of IT" and notes that companies must embrace these technologies by harnessing their combined power and transforming their business models to compete. Those who modernize their operations with the SMAC stack will thrive, while those with outdated "industrial age" models are at risk of disruption from more nimble digital competitors. The document urges companies to identify how SMAC can differentiate their key processes in order to prepare for this significant change.

1. ©2013, Cognizant
Image
Area

2. | ©2013, Cognizant2
Introduction
• If your company is more than 10 years old, its structure is probably
wrong in many ways.
• Your key processes, and the organizational and financial models
that support them, were likely architected for yesterday’s world of
widgets and are floundering in today’s onslaught of digits.
• “Digit winners” possess just one key advantage:
• They harmonized their value chains with today’s information-based
markets by harnessing an emerging computing model: the social,
mobile, analytics and cloud information technology stack, or
“SMAC stack”, for short.
• And if you don’t follow suit, then you risk being usurped by fast-
moving competitors that have.

3. | ©2013, Cognizant3
Introduction cont.
• Welcome to the most significant change to hit the business world in
decades, as new competitors trounce the old with approaches that
reflect the digital world in which we live and work.
• What companies are learning the hard way, is that it’s not enough to
simply “bolt on” these new tools to existing business models.
• The power of this technology platform is in treating it as a stack,
for its components have a multiplying effect when they work in
combination.

4. | ©2013, Cognizant4
Introduction cont.
• Successful companies from the industrial age are crumbling under
their own weight, with business models that no longer fit the
new digital realities of their markets.
• Think Borders, Blockbuster and Kodak, all of which quickly toppled
in the face of new-age competitors, Amazon, Netflix and
Shutterfly.
Source: Company reports; valuations as of mid-November, 2012

5. | ©2011, Cognizant5
Today’s corporate reality is the
digitization of entire business
models and industries.
Are you ready?

6. | ©2013, Cognizant6
The Fifth Wave of IT: The “SMAC Stack”
• The new master corporate IT model — the SMAC stack — is the “fifth
wave of IT” (see chart below).
• Like the four waves before it — the mainframe, minicomputer,
client/server and the Internet — SMAC will generate significant
dislocation and wealth creation for the IT hardware, software and
services sectors and drive new levels of productivity for businesses

7. | ©2013, Cognizant7
Building the Modern Enterprise
• To prepare for the fifth wave of IT, business leaders need to understand
three key interrelated issues:
• Embrace new technology: Transforming business today means
harnessing the multiplying effect of the SMAC stack.
• “Unchain” business models: The SMAC stack will help businesses
unbundle tightly-coupled, industrial-age value chains, create
boundaryless ways of working and transform key processes and
entire industry structures.
• Focus on knowledge processes: Successful transformation will
happen when you identify key knowledge process areas, where the
confluence of the SMAC stack and new ways of working can truly
differentiate your business and change the competitive equation.

8. | ©2013, Cognizant8
Don’t Get SMACked
• Today’s corporate reality is the digitization of entire business models and
industries.
• In this new landscape, it doesn’t matter how hard your organization
works, how well you manage or what resources are at your disposal; if
you are competing with an antiquated business model, you are at risk of
facing your own Kodak moment.

9. | ©2013, Cognizant9
Learn More
• Our white paper “Don’t Get SMACked” will help you answer these
questions and prepare for the fifth wave of IT.
• This paper and other information about the SMAC stack can be found at
www.cognizant.com/smac or contact us at inquiry@cognizant.com to be
connected with one of our SMAC experts.
Scan here to download
Don’t Get SMACked

10. | ©2013, Cognizant10
Key Questions You Should Be Asking
• Whether you’re a general manager, head of information technology or
leading your company’s strategy, a decade from now, you’ll be asked the
same two questions: