Tag: Accenture

Working in the Metaverse Is a Miserable Experience

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be enamored with the metaverse, but people who have to work in it have a decidedly different view.

Meta has been heavily investing in the metaverse, the next generation of immersive virtual and augmented reality. Zuckerberg has a vision of what he wants the metaverse to be, one that’s reminiscent of something straight out of Ready Player One.

Individuals actually trying to work in the metaverse are not so thrilled, citing issues and irritations that constantly get in the way.

“I am totally immersed in the metaverse, have a big headset on, and then I need to take off the Oculus, look on my phone for the two-factor authentication code that’s been sent to my phone, then memorize the number, put my headset back on, and try to key it in,” a junior manager at Accenture told Slate.

“But when you take off the Oculus it automatically goes to sleep mode, and I was trying to navigate the back-and-forth.”

Similarly, an Accenture manager told Slate that “over the past year, when our company rolled out a bunch of Oculus headsets to a large population to see how we might self-adopt the technology. I feel like we were guinea pigs in how the metaverse might be applied to more of a workplace social setting.”

Read more: Oculus Founder Says Meta’s Metaverse Is Like ‘Project Car’ That’s ‘Not Good’

In addition to the logistic issues involved in integrating the metaverse into a corporate workflow, there are also the physical limitations of the tech, with some users struggling to deal with debilitating side effects.

For example, Congress recently refused additional funds to secure more Microsoft HoloLens combat goggles for the US Army. Despite the Army’s desire to integrate the AR goggles, tests showed 80% of soldiers experienced “mission-affecting physical impairments” after less than three hours of use.

Accenture evidently experienced similar issues, with some individuals struggling with motion sickness. Still others struggled with learning new VR social customs, such as how close to stand to other individuals. There were also issues with the VR models not offering enough options to properly represent users.

“The body shapes that were available in the [AltspaceVR app] didn’t have characters that had breasts,” the Accenture manager told Slate.

Only time will tell if Meta’s vision ultimately achieves success, although many are unconvinced. One major meta investor has already urged the company to scale back the $10 to $15 billion a year it is investing in the metaverse.

“The company has announced investments of $10–15B per year into a metaverse project that largely includes AR / VR / immersive 3D / Horizon World and that it may take 10 years to yield results,” the investor wrote. “An estimated $100B+ investment in an unknown future is super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards.”

January 19, 2023
Microsoft, Linux Foundation and Others Launch The Green Software Foundation

Microsoft, the Linux Foundation, Accenture, GitHub and ThoughtWorks have launched The Green Software Foundation to promote sustainable software development.

Software development may not be the leading contributor to climate change, or even come up in most conversations about it, but estimates place data center electricity usage at 1%. Over the next decade, data center electricity usage is expected to increase to 3-8% of global usage.

Microsoft and its fellow organizations founded The Green Software Foundation nonprofit with the intention of building “a trusted ecosystem of people, standards, tooling and leading practices for building green software.” The foundation will work to help the information and communications technology sector meet its Paris Climate Agreement goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030.

“The scientific consensus is clear: the world confronts an urgent carbon problem,” Microsoft president Brad Smith said. “It will take all of us working together to create innovative solutions to drastically reduce emissions. Today, Microsoft is joining with organizations who are serious about an environmentally sustainable future to drive adoption of green software development to help our customers and partners around the world reduce their carbon footprint.”

The foundation outlined its three primary goals:

Establish green software industry standards: The foundation will create and publish green software standards, green patterns and practices across various computing disciplines and technology domains. The group will encourage voluntary adoption and help guide government policy toward those standards for a consistent approach for measuring and reporting green software emissions.

Accelerate innovation: To grow the green software field, we need to nurture the creation of trusted open-source and open-data projects that support the creation of green software applications. The foundation will work alongside our nonprofit partners and academia to support research into green software.

Drive awareness and grow advocacy: If we want companies to build greener applications, they need people who know how to build them. As such, one of our key missions is to drive widespread adoption of green software across the industry through ambassador programs, training and education which leads to certification and events to facilitate the growth of green software.

May 25, 2021
Accenture: Cybercriminals Becoming More Brazen

“The biggest takeaway from our research is that organizations should expect cybercriminals to become more brazen as the potential opportunities and pay-outs from these campaigns climb to the stratosphere,” says Josh Ray, who leads Accenture Security’s cyber defense practice globally.

“Since COVID-19 radically shifted the way we work and live, we’ve seen a wide range of cyber adversaries changing their tactics to take advantage of new vulnerabilities,” said Accenture’s Josh Ray. “In such a climate, organizations need to double down on putting the right controls in place and by leveraging reliable cyber threat intelligence to understand and expel the most complex threats.”

Sophisticated adversaries mask identities with off-the-shelf tools

Throughout 2020, Accenture CTI analysts have observed suspected state-sponsored and organized criminal groups using a combination of off-the-shelf tooling — including “living off the land” tools, shared hosting infrastructure and publicly developed exploit code — and open source penetration testing tools at unprecedented scale to carry out cyberattacks and hide their tracks.

For example, Accenture tracks the patterns and activities of an Iran-based hacker group referred to as SOURFACE (also known as Chafer or Remix Kitten). Active since at least 2014, the group is known for its cyberattacks on the oil and gas, communications, transportation and other industries in the U.S., Israel, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Australia and other regions. Accenture CTI analysts have observed SOURFACE using legitimate Windows functions and freely available tools such as Mimikatz for credential dumping. This technique is used to steal user authentication credentials like usernames and passwords to allow attackers to escalate privileges or move across the network to compromise other systems and accounts while disguised as a valid user.

According to the report, it is highly likely that sophisticated actors, including state-sponsored and organized criminal groups, will continue to use off-the-shelf and penetration testing tools for the foreseeable future as they are easy to use, effective and cost-efficient.

Ransomware feeds new profitable, scalable business model

Ransomware has quickly become a more lucrative business model in the past year, with cybercriminals taking online extortion to a new level by threatening to publicly release stolen data or sell it and name and shame victims on dedicated websites. The criminals behind the Maze, Sodinokibi (also known as REvil) and DoppelPaymer ransomware strains are the pioneers of this growing tactic, which is delivering bigger profits and resulting in a wave of copycat actors and new ransomware peddlers.

Additionally, the infamous LockBit ransomware emerged earlier this year, which — in addition to copying the extortion tactic — has gained attention due to its self-spreading feature that quickly infects other computers on a corporate network. The motivations behind LockBit appear to be financial, too. Accenture CTI analysts have tracked cybercriminals behind it on Dark Web forums, where they are found to advertise regular updates and improvements to the ransomware, and actively recruit new members promising a portion of the ransom money.

The success of these hack-and-leak extortion methods, especially against larger organizations, means they will likely proliferate for the remainder of 2020 and could foreshadow future hacking trends in 2021. In fact, Accenture CTI analysts have observed recruitment campaigns on a popular Dark Web forum from the threat actors behind Sodinokibi.

Accenture-2020-Cyber-Threatscape-Full-Report Download

October 19, 2020
Accenture CEO: Once In An Era Replatforming Of Global Business

Accenture announced the formation of Accenture Cloud First with a $3 billion investment over three years. Accenture’s $3 billion investment will be used to continue advancing — often together with its cloud and broader technology ecosystem partners — industry roadmaps, data models, and solutions; cloud AI data and AI architectures; integrated full-stack infrastructure and applications capabilities; cloud tools, assets, and automation to drive lower unit cost and innovation; and research and development in edge computing and related cloud technologies.

Accenture Cloud First is a new multi-service group of 70,000 cloud professionals that brings together the full power and breadth of Accenture’s industry and technology capabilities, ecosystem partnerships, and deep commitment to learning and upskilling clients’ employees and to responsible business, with the singular focus of enabling organizations to move to the cloud with greater speed and achieve greater value for all their stakeholders at this critical time.

“COVID-19 has created a new inflection 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,” said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet. “Accenture Cloud First and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment to delivering greater value to our clients when they need it most. Digital transformation requires cloud at scale, and post-COVID leadership requires that every business become a ‘cloud-first’ business.”

The idea is to help clients across all industries rapidly become “cloud-first” businesses and accelerate their digital transformation to realize greater value at speed and scale. Karthik Narain will lead Accenture Cloud First and join the Global Management Committee, effective October 1.

Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, discusses how the company is investing in helping businesses “replatform” in the cloud:

Once In An Era Replatforming Of Global Business

There has been this massive acceleration in the cloud. Really what’s happening is a once in an era replatforming of global business. We are 20 percent in the cloud today. We believe we will move to around 80 percent in just five years. What Accenture Cloud First is about is helping companies get there faster by bringing together all of the capabilities with a singular focus of how are we going to replatform at speed.

Pre-COVID we worked with a ton of the digital leaders who have been out front. What we see is that there are three important components. First of all, with our cloud partners across the spectrum it’s really critical to not just move companies but to move entire industries. That takes the road map, the learning, and the data integration about what problems are specific to the industry. We are going to be investing in those solutions often along with our partners.

The second area is the speed, investing in better automation and technology that is going to help not just move these companies faster but actually also be able to operate in the cloud with increasingly more productivity. Think about the cloud becoming a platform for their productivity.

Investing In Making Replatforming Sustainable

The third place is around talent and sustainability. If you are replatforming entire global businesses in the cloud we have to do so in a sustainable way. This means getting out of the datacenter to the cloud and what it does for climate change. It’s around things like supply chain and making sure that you are building in the ability to have the integrity of the supply chain and that you are reskilling.

We will be investing in making this replatforming sustainable. This is core as we think about post-COVID our belief as companies across the globe and government that we need to make a better future for all by building in this view of all stakeholders from the planet to our people.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet: Once In An Era Replatforming Of Global Business

September 17, 2020
Accenture NA CEO on Creative Ways to Fill Jobs for the Digital Transformation

The CEO of Accenture North America, Julie Sweet, says that they are still seeing a very continued big focus by companies on digital transformation. The problem is that there are not enough workers with the right skills. Sweet believes that the US should not only upskill current workers through training but should also pivot our educational system for the jobs that are going to be created in the future.

Accenture just opened a new Innovation Hub in Seattle which will create 300 highly skilled technology jobs by the end of 2020 and expanding its U.S. apprenticeship program. The apprenticeship program provides under-represented groups greater access to innovation-economy jobs. Accenture’s national program will grow to more than 150 apprentices by the end of this year, building upon the success of the company’s apprenticeship programs in other cities, including Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, and San Antonio.

“Our investment in Seattle ensures that we have the critical talent and capabilities to help our clients create, implement and scale solutions for the digital economy,” said Sweet. “We are an innovation-led company, committed to helping this important market continue to grow and flourish as a tech destination.”

Accenture’s innovation hub in Seattle is part of a network of U.S. hubs including in Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; metro Detroit; Houston; New York; metro San Francisco and metro Washington, D.C.

Julie Sweet, Accenture North America CEO, discussed the current digital transformation and the need for companies to be creative in filling the current 6 million job openings on CNBC:

We Are Still Seeing a Big Focus on Digital Transformation

Companies are spending more on cybersecurity every year and unfortunately, the breaches keep happening. We expect right now that this to be a very fruitful career for many people for a long time and we’re seeing it in our business also. We have a $2 billion business today, growing double digits. People being hired are everything from people out of high school or in two-year degrees to much more sophisticated people that are doing advanced threat intelligence.

What we are seeing is still a very continued big focus on digital transformation. Companies are saying there’s a lot going on in the market, there’s a lot of disruption and we’ve got to find the ways to cut costs in order to invest to become a digital business. If you think about it, half the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 no longer exists today and so the real way to succeed is to become a continuous innovator. They either merged or they went out of business. The key to innovation is accessibility and it’s no longer Silicon Valley, it’s around the world.

Lots of Tech Job Opportunities for Those Without 4-Year Degrees

There are also a lot of opportunities now for two-year degrees. In fact, we now have an apprenticeship program where we have a 150 professional apprentices with two years or high school degrees working in tech jobs. We’ll have 300 next year and we see that as a real opportunity for the US to do mid-career reskilling and to close the skills gap as well as bring people who’ve been left behind.

It can be a mistake to go for a four-year degree for some people. I would go back to a parents advice to their children in terms of what are the kinds of jobs that are going to be created and what are your interests?

Accenture North America CEO Julie Sweet earlier this year elaborated on what the country should do to find workers skilled in digital, cloud, and security:

There Aren’t Enough Workers with the Right Skills

It’s not so much that there aren’t enough workers, it’s that there aren’t enough workers with the right skills. If you look at unemployment today there are about 6 million jobs open and there are about 6 million people looking for jobs. They don’t have the right skills.

One of the things we’ve been focused on at Accenture is reskilling our own workforce as we have pivoted our business to where our clients need to go which is around digital, cloud, and security. There’s been a lot of industry discussion about the need to invest and really both upskill our current workers and pivot our educational system for the jobs that are going to be created in the future.

November 19, 2018
Survey Finds 1/3 of Companies Not Satisfied with Digital Employees

Accenture has a new report out called Organizing for Digital Success, which is based on the survey of over 200 digital executives in the U.S. at companies with revenue of $1 billion to over $75 billion. These include CMO CDO, CIO, SVP, VP, and senior digital executives at companies in the consumer-packaged goods, manufacturing, retail, financial services, communications, media and technology, SaaS, healthcare, hospitality, and travel industries.

The report found that nearly a third of companies are not satisfied with the skill sets of employees in their digital organizations.

As a spokesperson for Accenture told us in an email, “The study found there is a significant gap in the skill sets wanted and the skill sets possessed by digital organizations, and 4 in 5 (81%) of the digital executives surveyed voicing the need for additional hiring.”

“This data shows a clear disconnect between expectations and reality in the digital branches of many organizations,” they added.

To give you an idea of what these companies are actually wanting their employees to achieve, here’s a look at the KPIs being measured:

Despite a troubling amount of dissatisfaction, most respondents feel that their companies are either on par with their major competitors (42%) or that they are the sector leader (27%) in terms of digital capabilities. Only 7% think they’re trailing behind the majority of their competitors. 24% believe they’re in the middle of the pack.

You can find the full report here.

Images via iStock, Accenture

April 27, 2016
Study: 68% of B2B Buyers Made Online Purchases Last year

A new study from Accenture Interactive finds that 68% of B2B buyers purchases goods or services online in 2014.

According to the firm, resistance to change from long-term buyers is the top challenge standing in the way of online growth for B2B organizations.

78% report moving customers online has the potential to strengthen customer awareness of new products while 74% say it improves cost efficiencies. 70% say it increases the number of new customers.

“Interestingly, current strategies for moving customers online vary by industry,” a spokesperson for Accenture Interactive tells WebProNews. “While email tactics are consistently used across industries, other nuances emerged that speak to the needs of buyers in each sector.”

“Editorial content is a critical part of eCommerce initiatives for technology and manufacturing and distribution initiatives, suggesting the need for more compelling reading material in sectors where the subject matter is dense,” the spokesperson says. “Manufacturing and distribution firms emphasize two-way communication tactics, indicating their customers may need more hand-holding to adjust to online purchasing.”

According to the survey, social media campaigns work well for retailers, which Accenture says speaks to the power of social persuasion in the industry.

You can find the study here.

Image via Accenture

November 2, 2015
Do Paywalls Scare Off Media Professionals?

Paywalls seem to be straightforward: users pay to gain access to content. What could be simpler? The internet, however, with its ability to infinitely copy and immediately disseminate information, quickly makes whatever lurks behind paywalls worthless. The only paywalls that have worked are those catering to niche industries or groups of people (such as financial investors) who require instant access to breaking stories in their industry.

eMarketer, a website specializing in digital intelligence reports, has just released a review of an April 2012 DigiCareers study in which U.S. digital medial professionals were polled about their feelings toward paywalls. Though a majority of them do not abide paywalls, there is evidence to suggest that attitudes toward the content-locking shcemes are becoming more accepting.

After encountering a paywall, 52% of digital media professionals immediately leave the site. 42% stick around to weigh whether the pricing is fair. Oddly, 4% of respondents “applaud the site for their business acumen.”

As for what respondents are willing to pay for, Hollywood might be winning its public relations battle in that area. While only 8% said they had paid for radio, 47% paid for movies and 35% paid for music. Of course, these percentages are still a minority, suggesting that a simple paywall scheme for entertainment content may not be the best model.

90% of survey respondents expect a “freemium” model where at least some content is free before hitting a paywall, and 63% expect no ads once they pay. Almost as many, 61%, are willing to see ads behind a paywall, as long as it lowers the paywall toll price. In what might be the most interesting news from the survey, only one-quarter of respondents said they had a negative perception of sites that use paywalls.

With so much free content available online these days, what could possibly get viewers to pay for content? The answer isn’t surprising. eMarketer cites an Accenture study that shows over one-third of viewers are willing to pay more for content that is either higher-quality or has reduced advertising attached to it. Viewers will gladly pay for new, high-quality content; they just don’t want to feel cheated. If content creators offer their products in an easy, straightforward manner, in quality as good as that available through piracy, viewers will buy it.

(via eMarketer)

May 17, 2012
Accenture Study: Social Media Appearing on TV Cut Through to U.S. Consumers

Social media is showing signs of connecting with TV viewers. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of U.S. consumers surveyed recall seeing social media symbols such as Facebook “Likes” while watching television, according to an Accenture ACN +2.60% study. What is even more noteworthy is that one in three viewers will interact with social media after seeing a social media symbol on TV.

Accenture conducted this survey of 1,000 U.S. television viewers to better understand the public’s perception of social media symbols that appear during programming and how effective they are. The survey found that the majority of survey participants claimed they had noticed and were also familiar with how to interact with social media symbols while watching TV, including the Facebook “Like” symbol (42 percent), QR codes (28 percent), Twitter Hashtags (18 percent) and Shazam symbols (9 percent).

One-third (33 percent) of those surveyed said they had actually interacted with the symbols while watching TV by “liking” the TV program on Facebook (20 percent), scanning a QR code (11 percent), searching for the Hashtag on Twitter (7 percent) or scanning the Shazam symbol (5 percent).

Robin Murdoch is Accenture’s global internet segment managing director. He believes that, “Social media and social networking are exploding across television screens as networks use social media to enable audiences to interact directly with related content for a richer viewing experience,” and added that the strategy “Has huge revenue growth potential as social media applications build program viewer loyalty and drive online advertising opportunities.”

Motivation for Interacting with Social Media Symbols While Watching TV

Obtaining more information about a show, product or service was the greatest motivator for interacting with a social media symbol while watching TV; cited by 43 percent of the participants who have done so. Other motivations included:

— getting coupons and promotional codes (32 percent);

— entering a contest/sweepstakes (31 percent);

— watching another video (26 percent);

— interacting about the show or product on social media (26 percent);

— connecting with others with similar interests (21 percent);

— sharing or recommending video/program to others (20 percent); and,

— making a purchase (16 percent).

Future Interaction with Youth

The majority of participants between the ages of 18 and 24 (63 percent) said they have interacted with social media symbols while watching TV. The percentage went down as age increased. Maybe the key is to train consumers to interact with social media signifiers while they are in their formative years.

How do you think companies will connect with child and teen audiences in the future?

April 17, 2012
Netbooks Set To Overtake Laptops And PCs

Purchase rates for personal computers and mobile phones (not including smartphones) will decrease by 39 percent and 56 percent this year compared with last year, respectively, according to a new survey from Accenture.

By contrast, buying rates of 3DTVs (three-dimensional TVs) are expected to rise 500 percent; tablet computers 160 percent; ebook readers 133 percent; and smartphones 26 percent.

The survey found that only 17 percent of survey respondents plan to buy a desktop or laptop computer in 2011– a 39 percent drop from 2010. Tracking with this trend, the survey revealed that 75 percent of U.S. survey respondents emailed each week from their PCs in 2010, down from 80 percent the year before.

The research also showed that respondents are using multiple devices such as tablet PCs for activities that used to be done on traditional PCs. For example, on at least a weekly basis, 40 percent of the respondents email from a tablet PC. In addition to checking email, respondents are using tablet PCs for browsing the web, watching videos and reading books, newspapers and magazines.

“The research findings raise the question as to whether, in the long run, desktop and laptop PCs in the home will be increasingly replaced by a group of newer technology alternatives such as tablet computers, netbooks, smartphones and e-book readers,” said Kumu Puri, senior executive with Accenture’s Electronics & High-Tech Practice.

“If strength is measured by unit sales, the computer will remain the strong consumer technology giant for many years. Our research found that 93 percent of survey respondents own a computer—a higher proportion than any of the 19 technologies included in the survey. But if measured by growth rate, the PC market–at least for consumers–has reached a level of saturation and will continue to see diminished growth rates. There’s increasing potential for an end in sight for the relevance of the personal computer in the home as we know it today.”

January 4, 2011
More Americans Accessing Internet And Social Media For Medical Advice

Americans looking for medical advice are visiting medical websites, social media sites, and online communities in greater numbers than the websites of pharmaceutical companies, according to a new survey from Accenture.

More than two-thirds (68%) of Americans go online for health information, and just 11 percent access a pharmaceutical company’s website to find information about a medical condition compared the the majority (92%) who access other online resources more frequently.

“Pharmaceutical companies that embrace innovations such as social networking and communications via mobile devices and integrate and align their communication strategy across multiple channels will be positioned to have a much greater influence on their patients’ choices and consequently, realize significant increases in revenue, profitability and sustained competitive advantage,” said Tom Schwenger, global managing director for Accenture’s Life Sciences Sales & Marketing practice.

According to the survey, 69 percent of respondents expect pharmaceutical companies to provide information about the medical condition or illness for which they are taking drugs. To address that expectation, Accenture believes pharmaceutical companies must not only provide the right information, but upgrade their websites to create a more dynamic, interactive experience.

“The survey results clearly show that pharmaceutical companies must adopt a better understanding of their patient behavior through sophisticated analysis in order to fully capitalize on how patients interact with social media channels and websites,” said Schwenger.

“With only 11 percent of survey respondents saying they most often use a pharmaceutical company’s web site to seek information about an illness or condition when looking online, pharmaceutical companies have a tremendous opportunity to better connect with patients through multiple digital venues in addition to their own website.”

November 16, 2010