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
This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to
our operations and results of operations, the accuracy of which is
necessarily subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could
cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or
implied include general economic conditions and the factors discussed
under the "Risk Factors" heading in our most recent annual report on
Form 10-K and other documents filed with or furnished to the
Securities and Exchange Commission. Accenture undertakes no duty to
update any forward-looking statements made in this news release or to
conform such statements to actual results or changes in Accenture's
expectations.