SMAC, Mobile Collaboration and Google

Have you had a chance to review the full inventory of Google's solutions and apps lately?  I have been working with many of them this week and am impressed with how Google is enabling enterprises to become true social businesses.  It is very interesting how they are not just demonstrating cool and innovative solutions but entirely new ways of running and managing businesses.

If fact, Jon Reed, John Appleby and myself recorded a Google+ Hangout session this week on the subject of enterprise mobility.  I will post the link of the recorded session as soon as it is ready.  I suggest that all businesses should study Google Hangout and understand how powerful it is.  Google Hangout is now embedded in Google Docs, Sheets and other apps.  Anytime you need to collaborate, simply push the Hangout button in the document.  Very interesting and useful!

I have also been collaborating with a group of folks around the country this week using Google Docs.  All of us can login and collaborate in real-time on the same document.  We can comment, edit and track who is adding what.  At the top of the document you can see all the people who are collaborating on the document at any moment in time.  It was an education in collaboration.

My job title is Head SMAC Analyst for Cognizant.  SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud)  represents a disruptive technological, cultural and workforce shift.  It is about connecting and collaborating whenever and wherever you are located.  Google enables workers to collaborate and access their online content, sheets, docs, notes, photos, videos, etc., across any mobile device, anywhere there is an Internet connection.  This is incredibly useful and convenient, although it takes some education to take full advantage of it.

Collaboration requires a different mindset.  Instead of individuals working on a document and then using email to send it for review by others, you can all just login to the same document in the cloud.  There are no versioning issues in this model.  Also, if you have a question about a document or sheet, again, just push the Google Hangout button on the document or sheet and invite your colleagues to gather around the item and discuss it in real-time.

Google seems to have passionately embraced SMAC and is demonstrating this by incorporating SMAC concepts and strategies in their entire inventory of solutions and apps.  With Google+ and Google Hangouts, Sheets, Docs, Blogger, Sites, Drive, Keep, etc., they are again showing the enterprise how to connect with mobile workers and effectively collaborate.  This is the death of distance some person smarter than me wrote recently.

Google is not just focused on the social component of the SMAC stack.  They have the market leading mobile operating system with Android.  They support analytics in many forms including Google BigQuery, Google Analytics and Google Universal Analytics.  They continue to demonstrate innovation with many forms of maps, navigation and location-based services.

We may associate Google mainly with their search engine, but don't miss how they are educating the world on becoming a social business using SMAC strategies.

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.