Get Smart, Get SMACT

The building blocks for smarter objects, smarter planet, smarter business are called SMACT: Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and Things. The Third platform (IDC) or Nexus of Forces (Gartner) is known as SMAC – without the Thing in it. The basic idea behind the acronyms is that we should focus on the joined forces of the components and not so much on the isolated terms. Our plead is to add “Things” to SMAC. The smartening of the economy, business and our personal life takes place by interacting with stuff. New Cyber-Physical systems, like sensors in engines and other “Things that Spin”, can create enormous efficiencies. Homes become smarter with a smart meter (a thing), smart grids include cars (things) in their architecture, and wearable computing (things) enable new forms of health care. There is no such thing as getting smarter without including things.
easel.ly Kevin Ashton coined the term Internet of Things in 1999 and look where we stand now: We’ve realized an Internet of People through mobile devices, we’ve connected socially, through cloud people and things can be connected easily, and IBM’s Watson showed how intelligent computers have become. A growing number of organizations are into SMAC, building new strategies based on the combined strength of four pillars. Real smart organizations are getting SMACT. They understand that the computerization of society takes place in a cyber-physical reality, which includes stuff.