Tag: accenture

Accenture song snaps up Work & Co in mega-deal

Tech giant Accenture Song has splashed out on Work & Co, a trendy New York design and technology firm, in a secret deal worth millions of pounds.

Work & Co has nearly 400 staff and boasts a dazzling array of skills and clients, including IKEA, Gatorade, Apple, Disney, Airbnb, and Google.

On Tuesday, Accenture Song, which used to be called Accenture Interactive, said that Work & Co will join its digital experience business, which helps clients boost their growth and value with cutting-edge products and services.

The exact price of the acquisition was not revealed, nor was the date when it will be completed.

Accenture Song is not done yet. The company also announced it will buy Navisite, a Massachusetts cloud solution and service provider.

Intel and Accenture release AI kits

Canalys Forum EuropeIntel has announced the culmination of a years-long collaboration with Accenture to bring 34 AI reference kits to the community.

The kits are said to aid developers and data scientists in deploying AI faster and more easily, accelerating AI development across a wide range of industries, including consumer products, energy and utilities, financial services, and health. 

Accenture takes a stake in Stardog

Accenture has invested in AI firm Stardog which has developed technology that combines data from several sources and makes it machine-understandable without changing the underlying data.

The big idea is to allow such data to be better searched, and improve searches using generative AI.

Accenture makes it clear that it is not acquiring Stardog, but is instead making a strategic minority investment in the company via its Accenture Ventures.

Accenture Cloud First. chief technologist Teresa Tung said: “We believe this is such a strategic technology that we want to get in with the startups so that we can shape their product to be best for helping us with our clients.”

Accenture, which currently partners with Stardog, did not disclose the size of its investment which apparently does not give it first rights to Stardog’s technology.

Instead the move means that Accenture can influence Stardog’s roadmap

 

Accenture gets Objectivity

Accenture has agreed to acquire cloud and platform development MSP, Objectivity.

The company said that the sale will enable Accenture to meet the new wave of platform engineering projects.

Accenture Cloud First boss Karthik Narain said Objectivity’s strong engineering culture and delivery experience will help clients pivot and launch new products quickly and efficiently.

Objectivity founder Rob Helle said Objectivity has provided innovative thinking to create the most fit-for-purpose digital solutions.

Node4 appoints Former Accenture as MD

Cloudy outfit Node4 announced that Hannah Birch had joined the company as its new managing director of digital and group board member.

Her brief includes managing the MSP’s digital business and strengthening its strategic relationship with Microsoft, leveraging Node4’s recent investments.

Node4 founder and CEO, Andrew Gilbert said: ​​”Birch understands how to drive transformational growth strategies, creating deeper value-based relationships with clients. ”

Accenture closes on Inspirage deal

Accenture has completed its acquisition of Inspirage, an integrated Oracle Cloud specialist firm with an emphasis in supply chain management.

The buy further enhances Accenture’s Oracle Cloud services, helping it accelerate innovation for clients through emerging technologies, such as touchless supply chain and digital twins.

Inspirage’s headcount of 736 people will join the Accenture Oracle Business Group, bolstering its Oracle supply chain skills and expanding its capabilities to help product-centric clients create interconnected, intelligent and innovative supply chain networks.

Accenture Supply Chain & Operations North America lead Renato Scaff said that in a time of unprecedented disruption and supply constraints, companies need to reimagine, build, and operate supply chain networks that orchestrate change, simplify people’s lives and positively impact business, society and the planet.

Security bosses focus on cloud

Enterprise security leaders in the UK are focused on cloud security, building up resilience against threats and aligning cybersecurity strategies with overall business goals.

A new research report The 2022 ISG Provider Lens Cybersecurity report from Information Services Group (ISG) claims cloud security is an enterprise manager’s top priority.

The growing use of cloud models such as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is forcing companies to adapt their cybersecurity approaches, with a focus on holistic resilience that requires more communication and training for employees and outside stakeholders, the report says.

It’s not grim up north

The number of professionals with technology skills is expanding at a faster pace in the North of England than in London and the south.

Number crunchers from Accenture found that demand for technology professionals is increasing in the UK as the technology jobs market continues to recover from the pandemic.

The figures show that London has maintained the lion’s share of the UK’s open technology roles (68,000) with demand increasing by 89 per cent from last year.

But the data reveals there is sizeable potential for cities outside of the capital to become technology hubs in the future, with growth in demand increasing in Manchester (234 percent), Birmingham (385 percent) and Oxford (264 percent).

Accenture increases staff list by 3,000

Temping outfit Accenture has revealed it will expand its UK workforce with 3,000 new roles over the next three years.

The company thinks its clients will need more staff if they are recovering from the pandemic.

Half of the new roles will be based outside of London, expanding the company’s presence in Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and adding to its existing UK workforce of around 11,000 people.

Cloud first makes the UK grade

An Information Services Group report claims that enterprises are increasingly embracing a cloud-first approach to their IT investments.

The “2021 ISG Provider Lens Public Cloud – Services & Solutions Report for the UK” said that enterprises are looking to service providers to help them migrate more of their workloads to the public cloud.

It finds many large UK enterprises interested in hybrid cloud environments, which enable continued use of legacy IT systems, even though an increasing number of companies anticipate a time when they would migrate all of their IT assets to the cloud. Small and medium-sized enterprises, meanwhile, are looking at infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) options to replace their depreciated hardware assets.

ISG partner Jan Erik Aase said that the move to the cloud is expected to be the primary driver of IT market growth in the UK in the coming years.

ISG sees application development and maintenance providers making a killing

UK enterprises are turning to application development and maintenance providers to help them meet the twin challenges of COVID-19 and Brexit and expand their digital business capabilities, according to a new report published today by Information Services Group (ISG)

In its 2021 ISG Provider Lens Next-Generation Application Development and Maintenance Services Report for the UK finds the application development and maintenance (ADM) market is proliferating in the UK with the increase in digital business demands.

ISG Digital Strategy and Solutions partner Ola Chowning said that the ongoing pandemic and Brexit had increased the need for UK enterprises to optimise IT costs and harness new technologies to gain a competitive advantage in an ever-changing market environment.

Accenture denies ransomware attack hurt

Accenture was the target of a LockBit ransomware attack, but the company insists that it had “no impact” on its own operations or on its clients.

LockBit published more than 2,000 files on the DarkWeb following the attack, including PowerPoints and case studies.

But in a statement, the global IT consultancy firm downplayed down the whole thing.

“Through our security controls and protocols, we identified irregular activity in one of our environments. We immediately contained the matter and isolated the affected servers. We fully restored our affected systems from back up. 

“There was no impact on Accenture’s operations, or on our clients’ systems.”

Accenture buys 40th company in ten months

Accenture’s industry sharking continues with its 40th purchase in ten months.

The outfit wrote a cheque for the cybersecurity firm Sentor, and the company said that it plans to spend $4 billion on M&A by the end of its fiscal year, which ends in August.

CEO Julie Sweet told the gathered throngs at the company’s quarterly earnings report last week that the level of investment demonstrates how scale, experience and trust matters.

Accenture gets Openminded

Accenture has announced its intent to acquire French cybersecurity services outfit  Openminded.

The move is apparently part of a cunning plan but Accenture to strengthen its security presence in the country and across the EU.

For those not in the know, Openminded specialises in delivering advisory, cloud and infrastructure security, cyber defence, and managed security services and the move will give Accenture more than 100 highly skilled cybersecurity employees to Accenture’s existing workforce of almost 7,000. Founded in 2008, Openminded is powered by a security operations centre and helps clients anticipate and reduce security risks, rapidly detect and respond to cyber incidents, as well as implement best practices in regulatory compliance.

Accenture investing $3 billion in cloud

Every silver has a cloudy liningAccenture is investing $3 billion over three years in its multi-service group, starting last autumn, to help clients across all industries become cloud-first businesses and accelerate their digital transformation.

Accenture said its Cloud First group is designed to harness the “full power and breadth” of the firm’s industry and technology capabilities, ecosystem partnerships, commitment to upskilling clients’ employees and responsible business approach.

Accenture’s CEO Julie Sweet said that Digital transformation required cloud at scale, and post-COVID leadership requires that every business become a cloud-first business.

“COVID-19 has created a new inflexion point that requires every company to dramatically accelerate the move to the cloud as a foundation for digital transformation to build the resilience, new experiences and products, trust, speed and structural cost reduction that the ongoing health, economic and societal crisis demands — and that a better future for all requires.”