Social, Cloud and data founding technology's future, says Gartner

The convergence of social, mobile Cloud and information has formed a Nexus of Forces, which is the basis of the technology platform of the future, according to new research from Gartner.

Although these forces are innovative and disruptive on their own, together they are disrupting old business models and creating new leaders, said the analyst firm. As such, the three are transforming user behaviour and creating new business opportunities, 

Chris Howard, managing VP at Gartner, said: “In the Nexus of Forces, information is the context for delivering enhanced social and mobile experiences. Mobile devices are a platform for effective social networking and new ways of work.

Social links people to their work and each other in new and unexpected ways. Cloud enables delivery of information and functionality to users and systems. These forces of the Nexus are intertwined to create a user-driven ecosystem of modern computing.”

The first force, social, provides an important need for mobility and is dependent on Cloud – for scale and access – and deep analysis to manage the growing number of interactions.

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

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

Cloud computing is the “glue” for all the forces of the nexus, 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 still would 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.

Howard added: “The combination of pervasive mobility, near-ubiquitous connectivity, industrial compute services, and information access decreases the gap between idea and action. To take advantage of the Nexus of Forces and respond effectively, organisations must face the challenges of modernising their systems, skills and mind-sets.

“Organisations that ignore the Nexus of Forces will be displaced by those that can move into the opportunity space more quickly — and the pace is accelerating.”

MyCustomer.com recently spoke with SAPs Rob Enslin to get his views on what the convergence of technologies means for businesses.