In November 2011, during an earnings call with analysts, Cognizant CEO Francisco D'Souza spoke of the company's big investments in social, mobile, analytics, cloud (SMAC): "Today, SMAC collectively represents a very small percent of revenue. Our goal there is not necessarily short-term revenue."
Although the company coined the acronym widely used in the industry, Cognizant was not expecting big revenues quickly from SMAC. It is set to earn $500 million (about Rs 3,000 crore) in 2013 from its SMAC division, set up early this year.
Gordon Coburn, president of Cognizant, said at a technology conference in Boston last month: "If you had to ask me two years ago, would it be $0.5 billion, not in my wildest dreams. That shift has happened really quickly."
The year 2013 was a watershed for the IT industry, as one of the most powerful forces in its history started taking roots quickly. Social, mobile, analytics and cloud are technologies that have been present for a few years, but this year they started combining and growing together as a bunch, feeding off and reinforcing each other. Never in the history of the IT industry have so many trends happened simultaneously, and never have they combined so powerfully. "When you combine technologies," says Sanjay Purohit, global head of products, platforms and solutions at Infosys, "they grow exponentially."