Trends Identified
Digital–physical blur: Extending intelligence to the edge
The physical world is coming online as objects, devices, and machines acquire more digital intelligence. What’s emerging is more than just an “Internet of Things”; it’s a new layer of connected intelligence that augments the actions of individuals, automates processes, and incorporates digitally empowered machines into our lives, increasing our insight into and control over the tangible world. There are benefits for consumers and businesses. Consumers become better informed and better equipped to influence the ways they experience everything around them. And businesses get real-time connections to the physical world that allow machines as well as employees to act and react faster—and more intelligently.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
From workforce to crowdsource: The rise of the borderless enterprise
Picture a workforce that extends beyond your employees: one that consists of any user connected to the Internet. Cloud, social, and collaboration technologies now allow organizations to tap into vast pools of resources across the world, many of whom are motivated to help. Channeling these efforts to drive business goals is a challenge, but the opportunity is enormous: it can give every business access to an immense, agile workforce that is not only better suited to solving some of the problems that organizations struggle with today but in many cases will do it for free.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
Data supply chain: Putting information into circulation
Yes, data technologies are evolving rapidly, but most have been adopted in piecemeal fashion. As a result, enterprise data is vastly underutilized. Data ecosystems are complex and littered with data silos, limiting the value that organizations can get out of their own data by making it difficult to access. To truly unlock that value, companies must start treating data more as a supply chain, enabling it to flow easily and usefully through the entire organization—and eventually throughout each company’s ecosystem of partners too.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
Harnessing hyperscale: Hardware is back (and never really went away)
Eclipsed by more than a decade of innovation in software, the hardware world is again a hotbed of new development as demand soars for bigger, faster, lower-cost data centers. Does your IT organization understand the new developments allowing companies to realize the benefits of “hyperscale” systems? In this new world, hardware matters more than ever in transforming enterprises into digital businesses with access to unlimited computing power that can be turned on and off as needed.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
Harnessing hyperscale: Hardware is back (and never really went away)
Eclipsed by more than a decade of innovation in software, the hardware world is again a hotbed of new development as demand soars for bigger, faster, lower-cost data centers. Does your IT organization understand the new developments allowing companies to realize the benefits of “hyperscale” systems? In this new world, hardware matters more than ever in transforming enterprises into digital businesses with access to unlimited computing power that can be turned on and off as needed.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
The business of applications: Software as a core competency in a digital world
The way we build software is changing. Mimicking the shift in the consumer world, organizations are rapidly moving from enterprise applications to apps. Yes, there will always be big, complex enterprise software systems to support large organizations, and it will still be necessary for IT developers to keep customizing those systems, providing updates, patches, and more. But now, as large enterprises push for greater IT agility, there is a sharp shift toward simpler, more modular, and more custom apps. The implications are significant for IT leaders and business leaders alike: they must soon decide not just who plays what application development role in their new digital organizations but also how to transform the nature of application development itself.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
Architecting resilience: “Built to survive failure” becomes the mantra of the nonstop business
In the digital era, businesses must support wide-ranging demands for nonstop processes, services, and systems. This has particular resonance in the office of the CIO, where the need for “always-on” IT infrastructure, security, and resilient practices can mean the difference between business as usual and erosion of brand value. The upshot: IT must adopt a new mindset to ensure that systems are dynamic, accessible, and continuous—not just designed to spec but designed for resilience under failure and attack.
2014
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Accenture
Relationships at Scale
Businesses need to rethink their digital strategies to move beyond e-commerce and marketing. Although mobile technology, social networks, and context-based services have increased the number of digital connections with consumers, most companies are still just creating more detailed views of consumers, consumer attributes, and transactions. Individually, these connections may represent new types of user experiences, even new sets of sales channels—but that’s not the real opportunity. Taken in aggregate, digital represents a key new approach to consumer engagement and loyalty: companies can manage relationships with consumers at scale.
2013
Accenture Technology Vision 2013
Accenture
Design for Analytics
Business intelligence. Data analytics. Big data. Companies are no longer suffering from a lack of data; they’re suffering from a lack of the right data. Business leaders need the right data in order to effectively define the strategic direction of the enterprise. The current generation of software was designed for functionality. The next generation must be designed for analytics as well.
2013
Accenture Technology Vision 2013
Accenture
Data Velocity
Business leaders have been bombarded with statistics about the soaring volumes of data that they can mine for precious insights. They have been deluged with articles describing the incredible variety of “external” data hidden in everything from tweets and blogs to sensor outputs and GPS data from mobile phones. But the next perspective on data that deserves attention is data velocity—the pace at which data can be gathered, sorted, and analyzed in order to produce insights that managers can act on quickly. As expectations of near-instant responses become the norm, business leaders will rely heavily on higher data velocities to gain a competitive edge.
2013
Accenture Technology Vision 2013
Accenture