On March 14, IBM announced "Smarter Commerce", a strategic initiative that addresses the surging market for Commerce 2.0 solutions that take advantage of the convergence of a number of disruptive software and hardware technologies. The combined impact of these technologies and their application has blurred the lines between traditional and ecommerce, tying mobile, social, analytics, and cloud computing with brick and mortar.

In this paper, IDC Insight highlights the important elements of the IBM Smarter Commerce announcement and looks at the implications of the announcement in the context of a powerful movement that is occurring in the commerce solutions marketplace, both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C).