Accenture Technology Vision 2012: Emerging Technology Trends for IT Leaders

Accenture publishes its technology vision annually. It is a distillation of extensive research over the course of the previous 12 months, the experiences of their research teams and the input of clients. In it, they outline the emerging technology trends that forward-thinking CIOs will use to position their organizations to drive growth and high performance, rather than just focusing on cost-cutting and efficiency improvements.

Accenture has identified six technology trends that will influence business over the next three to five years:

-- Context-based services. Where you are and what you are doing will drive the next wave of digital services.

-- Converging data architectures. Successfully rebalancing the data architecture portfolio and blending the structured with the unstructured are key to turning data into new streams of value.

-- Industrialized data services. The ability to share data will make it more valuable—but only if it is managed differently.

-- Social-driven IT. Realize that social is not just a bolt-on marketing channel. It will have true business-wide impact.

-- PaaS-enabled agility. The maturing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market will shift the emphasis from cost-cutting to business innovation, supporting rapid evolution for business processes that need continuous change.

-- Orchestrated analytical security. Organizations will have to accept that their gates will be breached and begin preparing their second line of defense—data platforms—to mitigate the damage caused by attacks that get through.

More information on IT Trends can be found at www.CRMindustry.com