Social-Mobile-Analytics-Cloud (SMAC) technologies will play a significant role in the building of next generation software products and solutions. Building solutions on this SMAC-stack requires a unique set of technical skills, different from the traditional software programming. This presentation focuses on some of the upcoming SMAC trends and the skills needed to stay relevant as these trends unfold.

1. Skilling for SMAC
Anand Deshpande
anand@persistent.co.in
June 2014
27 July 2014 1

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We are at the early stage of a huge technology wave!

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It would be fun to ride the wave …

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… however, we could very easily be
swept away by the wave

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This presentation is targeted to all
those who are already in the water and must avoid getting
washed away and those who want to ride the waves and join the
excitement!

6. 27 July 2014 6
This presentation is targeted to all
those who are already in the water and must avoid getting
washed away and those who want to ride the waves and join the
excitement!

7. What are these technology trends?
27 July 2014 7

8. Meaning of SMAC, & smack …
SMAC1
/smæk /[smak]
noun (used with technology)
n.intr
1. Is an amalgamation of Social, Mobile, Analytics & Cloud Computing
technologies for radically improving the effectiveness of a business
process and/or change the underlying business model: Netflix used
SMAC to drive Blockbuster out of business by re-imagining how movies were
rented..
smack2
/smæk /[smak]
verb (used with object)
v.intr
1. to strike sharply, especially with the open hand or a flat object.
2. to drive or send with a sharp, resounding blow or stroke: to smack a ball
over a fence.27 July 2014 8

9. Cloud computing
is already mainstream!
● Driven by economics ...
… about 30% reduction in
costs!
– Cost of infrastructure
– Cost of management of infrastructure
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11. Growth is being driven by larger companies
investing in cloud infrastructure.
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13. Why does the cloud work?
Flexibility and
agility
Cost Device and
Location
Independence
Scalability
Multi-tenancy Security Maintenance Metering
27 July 2014 13

14. Mobility will be all pervasive
● Mobility is not just small screen.
There is more.
– Anytime, Anywhere access
– Built for Presence and Location,
– Task specific apps
● Mobile Devices  tablets and
smart phones
 smart devices  smart sensors
● Build for mobility.
1427 July 2014

15. 27 July 2014 15
As of Q1 2014:
India has the second largest
mobile subscriber base of
933 million subscribers.
91.59 million of these are
smartphones.
http://www.dazeinfo.com/2014/06/22/smartphone-apac-market-forecast-
2014-2018-india-china-australia-japan-growth/#ixzz35SdE8Huy

16. Sensors  Connectivity  People  Processes
27 July 2014 16

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22. Availability and
ability to analyze
large volumes of data
has created new data-
centric businesses.
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24. 27 July 2014 24(http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/data-veracity)

25. Big Buzz around Big Data
2527 July 2014

26. The Path to Data Stack 3.0:
Must support Variety, Volume and Velocity
26
Data Stack 3.0
Dynamic Data Platform
Uncovering Key Insights
Schema less Approach
PBs of Data
End User Direct Access
Structured + Semi Structured
Data Stack 2.0
Enterprise Data Warehouse
Support for Decision Making
Un-normalized Dimensional Model
TBs of Data
End User Access Through Reports
Structured
Data Stack 1.0
Relational Database Systems
Recording Business Events
Highly Normalized Data
GBs of Data
End User Access through Ent Apps
Structured

27. We live in a world of platforms and
apps
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28. More than 75 Billion Apps Downloaded on
the Apple AppStore.
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29. We are moving to a world of disposable
apps in the enterprise!
● DIY apps
● Rapid development
cycles
● Task-centric apps
● Common API-based
platform
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30. Open APIs has made
the App EcoSystem
possible.
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31. Enterprise Value is Shifting to Data
31
Mainframe
Operating
Systems
ERP
Apps
Data
20152008
Database
19951985197527 July 2014

32. User Experience is most important
Mobile Devices Touch Gestures Voice
Wearable Devices Sensor Networks Augmented Reality
Large Touch
Monitors
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33. Rethinking the user
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and their need
to be social

34. Focus on User
Experience
$$

35. The cost of software
development is
significantly lower in
the new cloud based
software stack
35

36. 36
Team
Size
Time
Period
Traditional
Ways
On the
Cloud
27 July 2014
(<½ the time) x (<½ the team)
< (¼ the cost)!

37. Ability to delay structure has profound
impact on the architecture of modern
systems
37
Schema/
Structure
Data
Focus on Read Structure
rather than Write Structure

38. Agile Development Cycle is best suited for
Digital Transformation Projects
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39. SMAC - Together!
39
Social
• Leveraging the
Collective.
• Reaching out to
the Collective
Mobility
• Always Connected
- collecting &
consuming.
• Spatial & temporal
Context.
Analytics
• Observe &
Optimize the
process from data.
• Respond to
customer in-situ.
Cloud
• Flexible, & Cost
Effective Service
Model.
• Adapt to changing
needs
Social Stakeholder Smarts Setup
Leveraging SMAC to enhance digital experience.
27 July 2014

40. 27 July 2014 40http://www.surfscience.com/topics/learn-to-surf/surfing-101/

41. Why Software is Eating the World …
27 July 2014 41
More and more major businesses and industries
are being run on software and delivered as
online services—from movies to agriculture to
national defense. Many of the winners are
Silicon Valley-style entrepreneurial technology
companies that are invading and overturning
established industry structures. Over the next 10
years, I expect many more industries to be
disrupted by software, with new world-beating
Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in
more cases than not.”
The Wall Street Journal in August 2011

42. Some obvious things
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● Software is being built by small teams with short cycles
– Every individual needs to know more.
● Technology is changing rapidly
– Must track and learn new technologies all the time.
● Scale is very important
– Systems are being built to handle very large volumes
● Data Science is crucial
– Sound fundamentals in Statistics and Algorithms is a must

43. Adopt 𝜋 strategy for building skills:
Combine breadth and depth
● Breadth across a wide
number of technology areas.
● Depth in two areas:
– One technology area
– One domain area
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Breadth
depth

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45. Framework for Modern Architecture
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conceptstools
Fundamentals
OS/Infrastructure
ProcessandTools
Data
Middleware
App Frameworks
Mobility/ User Experience

46. Basic Skills
● Good communication skills and ability to work in teams
– English Writing and Speaking skills
– Documentation
● Good Typing skills
– Fast, all finger typing
● Spreadsheet and Presentation skills
– Must know how to manipulate with
spreadsheets and make presentations
● Editors
– Text Editors such as emacs, vi
27 July 2014 46
Fundamentals

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People think that computer science is
the art of geniuses but the actual
reality is the opposite, just many
people doing things that build on
each other, like a wall of mini stones.
Donald Knuth

48. Fundamentals of Computer Science
● Data Structures
– Arrays, Heaps, Lists, Trees, Hash tables
● Algorithms
– Sorting, Searching, Encryption,
● Complexity
– Big O notation, space-time tradeoffs
● Machine Learning
– Data Mining, Statistics
27 July 2014 48
Fundamentals

49. Scale and Data Science are Crucial in the
New World
● Statistics and Mathematics
– Good understanding of Mathematics especially Statistics
– Some skills in Matlab or equivalent
● Machine Learning is an integral part of automation
– Algorithms
– Data Mining
– Tools for data mining
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Fundamentals

50. Hands-on Programming Skills is a must!
● Programming
– Object-oriented, Asynchronous Programming, Recursion, Regular
Expressions, Patterns - MVC
● Programming Languages
– One language for core and heavy-duty programming such as Java
– One language which is interpreted and is
good for scripting such as Python,
– Language of the web -- Javascript
– One language that is different – functional,
event-based, such as Erlang or Scala
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Fundamentals

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52. User Experience and Design Thinking
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Fundamentals

53. Processes and Tools
● Agile Development
– Is well suited for small teams and short cycles
● DevOps
– Hottest buzzword … about combining development and
operations.
● Tools
– Release Management
– Tools for automation
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ProcessandTools

54. Use Agile, a tried and tested
methodology
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Build
Incrementally
& Iteratively
Individuals and interactions
over processes and tools
Working software
over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration
over contract negotiation
Responding to change
over following a plan
ProcessandTools

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“The best programs are written so that
computing machines can perform them
quickly and so that human beings can
understand them clearly. A programmer is
ideally an essayist who works with traditional
aesthetic and literary forms as well as
mathematical concepts, to communicate the
way that an algorithm works and to convince
a reader that the results will be correct.”
― Donald Ervin Knuth, Selected Papers on
Computer Science

56. SAF: Scaled Agile Framework
ProcessandTools

57. What is DevOps?
● DevOps is the blending of tasks performed by a
company's
– application development and
– systems operations teams.
● DevOps is a philosophy or cultural approach that
promotes better
– communication between the two teams as more elements of
operations become programmable.
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ProcessandTools

58. DevOps Toolkit
● configuration management tools like Puppet and Chef,
● a repository like GitHub for storing versions of code, Jira
for issues and bugs
● tools for monitoring how changes to code affect the
environment like Nagios and
● scripting languages like Python, Perl, PHP and Javascript.
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ProcessandTools

59. ● Each team comprises of 7 ±2 people
● Scrum Master: Dedicated or shared
● Product Owner (PO): Only one for a team, PO may work with multiple teams
● Team can be based on Features, Components, Products etc.
● About 100-125 people max at every Agile Release Train (ART)
● Scrum with extreme programming XP engineering practices are used.
● Design/Build/Test (DBT) teams deliver working, fully tested software every
two weeks. There are five to nine members of each team
● Every tests, every codes
– Developers write code and automated unit tests
– Testers work in parallel to write automated acceptance test cases
– Developers are Testers work together to satisfy ‘definition of done’
SAFe: Team
ProcessandTools

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Without real experience in using the
computer to get useful results the
computer science major is apt to know all
about the marvelous tool except how to
use it. Such a person is a mere technician,
skilled in manipulating the tool but with little
sense of how and when to use it for its
basic purposes.
• Richard Hamming, 1968 Turing
Award lecture, Journal of the
ACM 16 (1), January 1969, p.6

61. Technology Stack
● This is evolving very fast
● Deployments are in the cloud
● Data from Internet of Things
● Consumption on mobile devices with
different form factors
● Today’s environment is about
– Agility – short, iterative cycles
– Scale – performance and volume
27 July 2014 61
conceptstools
OS / Infrastructure
Data
Middleware
App Frameworks
Mobility/ User Experience

62. OS/Infrastructure
● Cloud Deployments
● Virtualization
● SDX: Software Defined
X={Storage, Network,
Data Center, …}
● Linux, Android, iOS
● Cloud based
development
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OS / Infrastructure

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A distributed system is one in which
the failure of a computer you didn't
even know existed can render your
own computer unusable.
Leslie Lamport
Turing Award Winner

64. Data
● Relational Databases
● NoSQL Databases
● Data at Scale
● Fast access and
manipulation
● From data to insights
● SQL
● MongoDB
● Cassandra
● Hadoop/Map Reduce
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Data

65. Middleware
● Web Services
● Security and Identity
Management
● RESTful APIs
● XML
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Middleware

66. App Frameworks
● Standard patterns that
programmers use to ensure speed
etc.
● MVC
● Javascript is most popular
● Node.js
● Angular, Express, Ember
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App Frameworks

67. Mobility / User Experience
● Mobility and Mobile
devices
● Technology is changing
very rapidly
● User Experience is most
crucial
● Android/iOS
● HTML5/CSS3
● Angular.JS
● D3.js
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Mobility/ User Experience

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The rise of Google, the rise of
Facebook, the rise of Apple, I
think are proof that there is a
place for computer science as
something that solves problems
that people face every day.
Eric Schmidt
Read more at
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/computer_science.html#fLPHy526G7
3lRgZF.99

69. The Best Time to Plant a Tree
27 July 2014 69
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The
second best time is now.
Chinese Proverb

70. Useful links
• GitHub guides
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What is it?
Any professional software development
project makes use of a version control
system. Git is one of them. It is essentially a
repository of files, typically source code files,
shared between multiple people on the team.
It tracks changes made to the files by
different people, notifies them about any
conflicts in their changes and enables them
to resolve the conflicts, thus maintaining a
single view of the source code for the entire
team.
Github is a website that hosts repositories
using Git as the version control system.
for Version Control

71. What is it?
Software projects need to be planned
and tracked to ensure that they are
delivered on time, within budget and
with desired quality. Jira is a project
management tool that adopts the
commonly used and preferred Agile
methodology. Jira has features to plan
sprints, view the backlog, track key
metrics, trace requirement to code,
and to enable teams to collaborate.
Useful links
● Jira test project
● Jira Agile
● Jira demo videos
27 July 2014 71
for Agile project management

72. What is it?
Chef automates the configuration and
management of the infrastructure, i.e. servers
and applications. It makes it easy to deploy the
infrastructure to any physical, virtual, or cloud
location, no matter what the size of the
infrastructure is. Chef enables the system
administrator to create “recipes” or abstract
definitions describing how each part of the
infrastructure should be built and managed.
These definitions are managed like source code.
Chef then applies those definitions to servers
and applications, as specified, resulting in a fully
automated infrastructure.
Useful links
● Getting started with Chef
● Learn Chef
● Learning Chef Series
27 July 2014 72
for automated infrastructure management

73. What is it?
APIs are windows through which applications on
the web communicate with each other and share
data. Facebook, Amazon, Google Maps and
innumerable others expose their services over
APIs which enables developers to
programmatically avail their services and create
interesting mashups. For example, wherever you
see a “Share this on Facebook” icon, a Facebook
API is being called in the background.
REST is an architectural style of building APIs and
a popularly used one. It leverages the HTTP
protocol that has made the web what it is today.
Useful links
● How to GET a Cup of Coffee
● REST in Practice by Jim Webber
● How to use APIs from Twitter,
Google & Facebook
27 July 2014 73
for opening up services and data

74. What is it?
OAuth is important for enabling
web apps to use the services of
other apps through APIs. It is an
authentication protocol that
allows the end user to say, “like”
any blog she comes across using
her Facebook profile without the
blogging website getting access
to her Facebook password.
Useful links
● OAuth for your API: The Big
Picture
● Twitter Dev FAQ for OAuth
27 July 2014 74
for security in the world of connected APIs

75. What is it?
Javascript is THE language of the Web
and is increasingly penetrating in the
full stack of modern application
development.
Javascript Object Notation (JSON) is a
format to represent data during
interchange such as over an API. It is
popular because of its language
indepenence, lightweight (so network
friendly), human readable, and can be
easily parsed by machines.
Useful links
● Javascript: The Good Parts by
Douglas Crockford
● JSON for beginners videos
27 July 2014 75
for representing interchangeable data

76. What is it?
AngularJS is a entirely client-
side framework for creating
web apps such as Gmail with
complex dynamics. It brings
MVC capability to browser
based apps. It does this
through a rich vocabulary of
directives that embed dynamic
action.
Useful links
https://angularjs.org/
27 July 2014 76
for creating complex web apps

77. What is it?
D3.js is a Javascript library for
creating powerful
visualizations based on data.
Data is an important asset and
can give critical insights, but by
itself data is difficult to make
sense of. What is needed are
visual views of the data that
bring out the meaning in it.
Useful links
http://d3js.org/
27 July 2014 77
for creating powerful visualizations

78. What is it?
Massive amount of data is being
generated continuously. To
process large data sets, scale-out
architecture and MapReduce are
used to divide the large data into
small chunks and process it in
parallel on commodity hardware.
Hadoop is an open-source
implementation of MapReduce.
Useful links
● http://hadoop.apache.org/
● http://hadoop.apache.org/docs/r1.
2.1/mapred_tutorial.html
27 July 2014 78
for processing large data sets

79. 27 July 2014 79
for building event-driven applications
What is it?
Node.js and express.js together are a
framework for easily building real-time
event-driven apps with high throughput
and low latency, example web chat.
They are both in Javascript which allows
for code sharing on server and client
side.
Together with Angular and MongoDB
they are known as the MEAN stack or
Javascript full stack.
Useful links
● Understanding event-driven
programming
● MEAN Stack

80. 27 July 2014 80
for creating quick prototypes
What is it?
HTML5 and CSS3 are the latest of these
standards. They can be used for creating
static prototypes quickly.
Useful links
● HTML5 Introduction
● CSS3 Introduction

81. 27 July 2014 81
SDKs for creating mobile apps
What is it?
iPhone and Android software
development kits (SDKs) allow
developers to create native apps that
can be run on mobile and tablet
devices.
Useful resources
● iOS Dev Center
● Android Developers

82. Useful resources
● Visual guide to NoSql systems
● Comparison of NoSql DBs
27 July 2014 82
for storing really BIG data
Pick
Two
Partition Tolerance
Availability
Consistency
MongoDB
CassandraNeo4j,
RDBMS
What is it?

83. 27 July 2014 83
What is it?
Python works on the philosophy that
speed of development is important.
Readable and terse code is part of
this, and so is access to powerful
constructs that avoid tedious
repetition of code.
Useful resources
● Python Tutorial
● Django Getting Started
for getting up and running quickly

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What is it?
Gets you the best of all programming
worlds. Manage your domain
complexities with OO constructs while
implementing behaviors with the
power of Functional programming. All
this comes with the time-tested
goodness of JVM.
Useful resources
● Course on Scala by Martin
Odersky
for all the heavy-lifting

85. 27 July 2014 85
What is it?
xUnit testing frameworks allow
automation of unit tests ensuring that
existing code doesn’t break as more
and more code gets added. JUnit,
PyUnit and Qunit complement to
programming languages Scala,
Python and Javascript.
Useful resources
● JUnit
● PyUnit
● QUnit
JUnit, PyUnit, QUnit to create robust code

86. 27 July 2014 86
Vi, Sublime Text Editors for writing code
What is it?
Use a powerful text editor such as Vi
or Sublime to punch in code. NOT
Notepad.
Useful resources
● Vi Editor
● Sublime Text

87. 27 July 2014 87
Shell Commands & Scripting
What is it?
Most elements of your stack have
shell interfaces. Be comfortable
with shell commands and have a
basic knowledge of shell scripting
to be able to quickly run and
automate most tasks such as
builds, debugging etc.
Useful resources
• The Unix Programming
Environment by Kernighan & Pike