Accenture to Invest $250 Million to Expand Technology Consulting Capabilities to Help Clients Align IT Strategy with Business Strategy



    Accenture (NYSE:ACN) will invest more than $250 million over the
    next three years to expand its technology consulting capabilities to
    help clients better align information technology and business
    strategy. The investment is designed to address a strong increase in
    demand from clients for services and advice from
    technology-platform-independent services providers.

    The investment will enable Accenture to enhance its strategy
    planning, marketing, offering and asset development, alliance
    development and management, and recruiting and training for its
    technology capabilities.

    Specifically, the investment will focus on helping clients:
    develop IT strategies that deliver measurable business outcomes;
    standardize, virtualize and secure their IT infrastructures and
    applications; improve worker productivity; and implement new
    consumer-like, Web-based applications that tap into the potential of
    services-oriented architecture (SOA) and other newer technologies.

    "Aligning IT with business strategy has, once again, become a top
    issue for companies worldwide," said William D. Green, Accenture's
    chairman & CEO. "To address this, we are enhancing the end-to-end
    services we offer through Accenture Technology Consulting, an
    organization within our Systems Integration & Technology growth
    platform. We will complement our rich portfolio of assets and
    processes with new services that provide greater insight into IT's
    impact on business performance. This is becoming particularly
    important as companies face new challenges in a variety of areas,
    particularly application renewal, information security and compliance.
    Our unique status as one of the few, and certainly largest,
    independent sources for technology services should position us well in
    addressing the dramatically increased demand we've seen for these
    services over the last year."

    Among the services Accenture Technology Consulting offers are IT
    strategy and transformation; IT merger integration; infrastructure
    transformation; security; and offerings that enable companies to
    cost-effectively renew legacy applications and provide in-depth IT
    performance assessments and metrics. The $250 million investment will
    enable Accenture Technology Consulting to expand on the development
    of:

    -- Next-generation data center capabilities, including data
    center consolidation; server consolidation and
    rationalization; storage transformation; test- and
    development-environment transformation; service desk
    optimization; and "green computing" for optimizing data-center
    performance while reducing power consumption;

    -- A series of enterprise network offerings that leverage
    Accenture's expertise in designing and building converged data
    and voice systems, including Internet protocol-based networks,
    which address the mobility demands of today's workforce by
    enabling anytime, anywhere access to corporate information,
    databases, e-mail and applications;

    -- Highly specialized IT infrastructure and application security
    capabilities focused on helping organizations decrease risk,
    reduce costs, maintain business continuity, improve
    productivity and allow secure interaction with employees,
    business partners and customers through effective identity and
    access management; and

    -- Next-generation workplace capabilities to help deploy IT to
    automate common workplace activities, including a solution
    that redefines the workplace as being wherever the employee
    needs or wants to work, and from any device, anywhere,
    anytime.

    Don Rippert, Accenture's chief technology officer, said, "We are
    enhancing the services we offer by building and expanding our
    technical capabilities and investing aggressively in our workforce. We
    bring together the entire range of IT solutions - from the upfront IT
    strategy to optimization of the underlying infrastructure and
    applications - necessary to deliver transformational results that
    clearly improve our clients' business performance and competitiveness.
    We believe that those who truly want to achieve high performance will
    strive to analyze improvement opportunities across their entire IT
    landscape, considering processes, people, IT operations and governance
    to make a positive impact on business performance."

    "The market for technology consulting services continues to grow
    at a steady pace as companies seek IT strategies to deal with a
    variety of issues ranging from compliance requirements to large and
    complex transformational initiatives," said Curtis Price, program
    director at industry analyst firm IDC. "IDC believes that Accenture's
    investment in technology consulting services is a perfect complement
    to the company's deep industry knowledge and strong management
    consulting operations. The development of a comprehensive set of
    technology consulting solutions, combined with the market demand for
    independent services providers, will enable Accenture to expand its
    sphere of influence and drive a more strategic relationship with
    companies seeking to leverage IT to meet business objectives."

    About Accenture

    Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services
    and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture
    collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance
    businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process
    expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture
    can mobilize the right people, skills and technologies to help clients
    improve their performance. With more than 152,000 people in 49
    countries, the company generated net revenues of US$16.65 billion for
    the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2006. Its home page is
    www.accenture.com.

    Forward-Looking Statements

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