Social + Mobile + Cloud = The New Paradigm for Midsize Business

The ascendency of mobile computing. By the end of 2011, more smartphones shipped than PCs.. And Apple sold more iOS devices in 2011 than they sold Macs in 28 years. “Bring your own device” (BYOD) to work is an undeniable trend in the workplace, bringing freedom and convenience for users, but headaches for IT. Users want to interact anytime, anywhere, with localized, contextual content. And they aren’t afraid to sidestep IT if they don’t get the access they want. IT can try to ban access, but more often than not, needs to rethink their approach to mobile and secure those mobile devices to minimize risks from loss, theft or misuse.

The continued rise of Cloud computing. With Forrester alone estimating enterprise cloud computing to grow to over $240 billion by 2020. It’s hard to find ANY current IT project today not considering cloud-based deployments. The conversation is no longer one of outright rejection due to security and quality-of-service concerns. Instead, the discussion is about the right mix of capabilities for the business. What should be delivered by cloud vs. on premises? How do I ensure new services are integrated with the solutions I already have in place? What’s the right policy and governance model I should be looking for from my cloud services providers? What level of customization do I really need, and how much standardization can I get away with? Despite cloud’s increasing sophistication and security in applications, information stores, transaction processing, or even analytics, critical questions still remain.

From Isolation to Synergy

Each of these three trends are compelling on their own. But just by looking at how 3 leading consumer-facing companies — Apple, Amazon, Google — behave, the real opportunity seems to be in how all three trends are intertwined. On the consumer side, it’s clear that all three trends are propelling major changes in consumer behavior. So this is one of those unusual cases where 1+1+1>3. While enterprises often move slower than consumers, this is the perfect opportunity to get ahead of the curve; most of these technologies are equally applicable to businesses and consumers.

• Cloud offers the promise of faster development and delivery of services. Taken just unto itself, sure, there will be cost savings and faster iteration of new delivery services. But the beauty of the cloud is that you can seamlessly deliver services to multiple end-points such as tablets and PCs.
• Mobile is good by itself, too: mobile delivery of enterprise email, calendar and other critical applications is a basic necessity.
• Social collaboration – blogs, wikis, file sharing, and social document collaboration create great opportunities for productivity.

It’s when you combine these three key trends — social, mobile and cloud – that the real synergies take place. There is an increasing body of case studies from consultants and vendors to back this up. Organizations as varied as IDC, McKinsey, The 2.0 Adoption Council, and social software vendors including, of course, IBM, have quantified this value. As they all have real businesses in the real world.

Bumbu Desa is a good example of just such a company. A midsize restaurant chain in Asia, they run a far-flung operation across multiple many countries. Combining social collaboration and cloud computing (PDF document), they were able to tie their locations more closely together, reduce travel costs and improve customer engagement.

Satel Oy, a smaller Finnish electronics and telecommunications company that designs, manufactures and markets radio modems, also took advantage of this synergistic effect. Many of their engineers work in the field with customers, so the ability to collaborate with colleagues while out of the office is a critical business need. By combining traditional email collaboration with mobile and newer social tools like online meetings and instant messaging, Satel was able to increase staff mobility and flexibility, while reducing their IT department’s workload. It takes only one person to manage the entire collaborative environment.

What Does This Mean for Midsize Organizations?

So clearly midsize enterprises can benefit from this synergistic effect of social + mobile + cloud. I’ve had the pleasure of supporting the midsize enterprise market for IBM — typically 100 to 1000 employee organizations — for several years. And I’ve noticed two things:

• Many midsize organizations face similar business and IT challenges to their Large Enterprise competition. Their IT needs therefore, often look very similar to Large Enterprises. But they are often significantly more limited in terms of resources. So midsize organizations may need simpler solutions with a lower up-front cost.
• There are many free tools available and popular with small businesses. On the surface, those solutions have two things in common: they’re easier to consume, and they don’t cost a lot up front. But where that model breaks down is for midsize organizations: these solutions don’t tend to scale well at all for more than 100 or so employees. And these “free” tools often lack critical functionality, customization or support that midsize or larger organizations demand.

Does that mean midsize enterprises are doomed to be stuck in the middle? No. These challenges can be overcome by choosing the right solution. A major new study by the Aberdeen Group interviewed many midsize enterprises, those using and not using social business capabilities. Those midmarket companies surveyed that take advantage of Social Business deployments were able to increase their revenue by 28%, with 108% return on investment *on collaborative technologies. I encourage you to read it for yourself (download the eBook here; no registration required.)