Accenture hot on cloud computing

Accenture gave another indication of the growing popularity of cloud computing last week when it revealed over half of 630 clients it surveyed now run mission critical applications with the technology.

One of the consulting giant's clients, a multimillion dollar global organisation that has achieved rapid growth through direct sales, came to Accenture when it was struggling to increase growth, explained Saideep Raj, partner of Accenture Global Saas Practice.

The company had tried to drive change several times and asked Accenture to help it to use cloud computing to do this.

Accenture worked with the client to initiate a project in two weeks, as it wanted to see quantifiable results within the quarter. The cloud was embedded into the processes of the company and metrics were agreed to drive the business.

At two week intervals Accenture helped to implement process changes and monitor the ongoing success of the project. The net result was that the client drove 10,000 new incremental leads per month, which helped to accelerate the business far quicker than using traditional methods, Raj explained.

The recession has certainly proved to be a driver for cloud adoption, but it also provides options that traditional methods do not, he added.

Generally, more and more companies are moving their sophisticated processes into the cloud as they can benefit from improved flexibility, as well as the opportunity to create new business models, said Raj.

Now, the Accenture partner may have been speaking at a NetSuite event yesterday, but the arguments are valid. The main barrier to more wholesale adoption of cloud computing appears to be lingering concerns over data privacy among those in highly regulated industries.

12 Jul 2010