SoMoClo ... huh?

If you’re a technologist or work in IT, you’re most likely very familiar with BYOD and what it stands for. But do you know what SoMoClo means?

Research firm Aberdeen Group came up with the term to illustrate the convergence of social media, mobile and cloud. What used to be three siloed technologies have now begun merging, thanks to an infrastructure that allows them to “collapse” into each other and form a new IT construct, a recent Aberdeen report said.

From an IT manager’s perspective, this new fusion of technologies presents various questions to ponder. How do you best consolidate and leverage these mobility initiatives? How do you control access (both physical and virtual) to data? What happens if a device is stolen or lost? And how do you set up the support side?

A majority of respondents from the “best-in-class category” seemed well aware of the risks with SoMoClo: 94 percent said they were given secure remote mobile access to their organization's’ network, and 73 percent said their organization has a process in place to handle lost, stolen or dysfunctional mobile devices. Three-fourths of best-in-class organizations also reported they conduct regular security assessments of their IT procedures.

The report posited that SoMoClo has potential to establish CIOs as forward-thinking technology leaders and offers them a converged vision and roadmap for tomorrow’s IT infrastructure. However, don’t expect CIOs to jump right in and start touting SoMoClo as the next big thing: Much work remains to be done before this concept is fully enterprise ready, the report said. 

The survey was based on the responses from 263 organizations in 45 countries across industries such as IT, government, telecommunications, finance and education. Most respondents were from North America (46 percent), followed by Europe (24 percent) and Asia (22 percent).