Trends Identified
Software-Defined Networking
With virtualization investments already paying off in servers and starting to pay off in storage, businesses must turn their attention to virtualizing the network in order to extend the life of their infrastructure and reap the full value of their virtualization investments. Like other virtualization technologies, softwaredefined networking (SDN) has the ability to radically change the flexibility with which businesses and IT operate. You may think of networking as a low-level technology, but this aspect of it has the ability to transform enterprises. With SDN, businesses can finally realize the vision of a dynamic enterprise.
2013
Accenture Technology Vision 2013
Accenture
Active Defense
Despite an increasing focus on securing the digital business, IT departments struggle to keep pace with recent advances in security technology. Enterprises know that endpoint security is not enough, but the move to active defense—risk-based approaches to security management, analytics-driven event detection, and reflex-like incident response—isn’t yet happening on a broad scale. Although these technologies are maturing rapidly and communities are forming to expose risks, the biggest barrier is slow adoption of solutions that already exist. IT’s core challenge: get current with best practices in security while getting smarter about the new active-defense possibilities and getting real about the journey ahead.
2013
Accenture Technology Vision 2013
Accenture
Beyond the Cloud
No vision would be complete without commenting on the cloud. However, cloud computing is no longer an emerging trend. The on-demand, elastic technology needs to be considered in all decisions made today; the key question is not “should we use cloud?” but “how can we use cloud?” More than that: cloud isn’t a single concept. Its individual elements—from IaaS to SaaS to PaaS, from public to private—are as distinct and different from one another as the opportunities for enterprises to use them. So the real “trend” is a shift in focus to the next phase: putting cloud to work and crafting an overarching approach that weaves cloud capabilities into the fabric of the enterprise—with business value uppermost in mind.
2013
Accenture Technology Vision 2013
Accenture
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