IT, once considered a supporting player in most companies, EMERGED AS A BUSINESS SUPERSTAR.

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2 As information technology moves from helping businesses to driving them, companies may not appreciate the changes ahead in terms of the technology and its delivery. A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION: IT, once considered a supporting player in most companies, EMERGED AS A BUSINESS SUPERSTAR. Technology no longer helps the business now it is the business. New IT is how CTOs and CIOs deliver agenda-critical services to markets and their internal customers, updated and rewired for the digital age. 2 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

3 In the past, these leaders focused largely on maintaining the company s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) capabilities and overseeing any custom development needs. However, the enterprise technologies and practices that have supported progress over the past decades are reaching the limits of their effectiveness. They were simply not designed for today s high-velocity, software-driven business world. IN THE NEW WORLD, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish, IT'S THE FAST FISH THAT EATS THE SLOW FISH. KLAUS SCHWAB The responsibilities of C-level technology leaders have expanded geometrically. Now, they need to focus on cultivating and deploying ecosystem allies and thinking about innovative solutions such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, automation and advanced analytics. But New IT is more than just new technologies. Achieving the agility that makes New IT possible requires these technologies, but also new skills and new ways to help deliver innovation to the business. It represents a fundamental shift from traditional technology strategy, development, and delivery models. 3 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

4 EXPLORING NEW IT CHANGES New IT throws out the old information technology playbook in favor of three fundamental needs: HOW WHAT WHO IT INNOVATION COST REDUCTION AGILITY DELIVERING DISRUPTIVE BUSINESS OUTCOMES CHANGING THE HOW. Companies no longer guess what the market wants and then deliver a plan a year later. Instead, New IT helps businesses to spot and react to trends quickly, delivering value to the market as demand for it peaks. To accomplish this, it emphasizes design thinking, agility, lean engineering, DevOps and analytics to support speed, quality, and cost improvements simultaneously. CHANGING THE WHAT. That means harnessing advanced technologies and platforms that help companies to work better, faster and more efficiently. Large teams no longer develop complex solutions instead, companies assemble them from existing internal and publiclyavailable components. This supports both speed and industrialization. It also means putting a stronger focus on security and cloud solutions. Businesses focus on redefining platforms and infrastructure, favoring loosely coupled, lightweight, and microservice-based solutions with cloud-native and mobile first capabilities. They back them up with robust monitoring, analytics, self-healing capabilities and auto-scaling features. CHANGING THE WHO. With diverse new ways of working and different tools, companies can now organize their people to become more effective. Traditionally, firms would often group common skills together in centers of excellence to achieve scale efficiencies and deploy knowledge more effectively. Now, they could change processes and technologies, automate more functions, and utilize liquid workforce concepts. A successful New IT initiative would benefit from an aligned human capital strategy, organization structure, talent strategy and sourcing plan, and it requires a risk-taking culture. 4 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

5 NEGOTIATING SEVERAL TECHNOLOGY HORIZONS By getting the how, what, and who that define New IT right, companies could gain the upper hand when it comes to disrupting their industries by delivering value faster, better and cheaper than ever. New IT lays the foundation to experiment with and adopt emerging technologies; quickly separating what works from what doesn t and adjusting pace to meet today s requirements. This is critical because emerging technologies such as AI, automation, analytics, DevOps, or platform-as-a-service (PaaS) will have different technology horizons, and thus require different adoption paces and distinctive trial and error loops. HOW WHAT WHO IT INNOVATION COST REDUCTION AGILITY DELIVERING DISRUPTIVE BUSINESS OUTCOMES HORIZON 1 NOW Current technologies and practices HORIZON 2 Estimated months High growth technologies and practices HORIZON 3 Estimated 36+ months High potential technologies and practices 5 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

6 The FIRST HORIZON focuses on the here and now. It involves current technologies and practices that seek to help extend and accelerate quality improvements while reducing the cost of today s technology solutions the ones that underpin a company s current business model. Cloud architectures, platform strategies for core processes, and scaled agile methods are all successfully demonstrated New IT practices that drive value, and continue to climb the adoption curve. For most companies, this game is all about adoption and standardization within the organization to get the most value from these fundamentals. The SECOND HORIZON reaches out into the future from an estimated 12 to 36 months and involves high-growth technologies and practices that support new products, business models or services. Blockchain, AI, and serverless computing are examples, and each has rapidly expanding ecosystems and capabilities. Most enterprise-scale businesses are in their early experimentation phases, producing uses cases that could radically improve existing businesses or create new ones. But so far, very few companies have climbed the curve to enterprise-scale adoption and revenue generation. Organizations should aggressively explore these technologies, building alliances and competencies to support future business applications. The THIRD HORIZON extends beyond the estimated 36 months. It concentrates on speculative but high-potential technologies and practices that may drive significant disruptions in the future. One example involves quantum computing. Companies have already successfully demonstrated the first basic use cases and are making them public, but the technology is far from robust, economical, or scalable. These technologies are on the watch list for enterprise architecture organizations, and for most, represent future considerations. 6 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

7 CHANGING HOW ORGANIZATIONS DELIVER TECHNOLOGY While introducing transformational new technologies, New IT would also compel companies to change the way they deliver these solutions. Over the past 30 years, implementing a large IT project in some ways resembled a moon shot a very big deal with lots of moving parts. These costly, complex solutions can take a long time to bring to market often a year or more and involve significant design, development and test teams. This approach often fosters make or break the business bets based on monolithic products and software releases a risky proposition. New IT is changing that approach to concentrate on agile, incremental delivery, focused on user experiences and analytically demonstrated results, release over release. Instead of taking months or years, capabilities now exist to help deliver technologies in days or weeks. The key operating principle involves experimentation: facilitate a lot of it, and not in neat, well-planned ways, either. In other words, be willing to break things and make mistakes. But do it quickly and with clear analytics and data to facilitate learning experience shows that simply guessing quicker will not necessarily improve results. 7 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

8 RETHINKING ARCHITECTURE AND TECHNOLOGY Delivering New IT effectively would require companies to change the game in their technology architecture as well. LEGACY APPLICATIONS Complex Inefficient Scaling Long-term Commitment to Technical Stack Remediating / Re-factoring monolithic platforms into components and layers Replacing components with SaaS solutions or with new PaaS / IaaS Language or Database conversion Migrating from commercial stacks to cloud services FUTURE READY APPLICATIONS Simple Efficient Scaling Reduces Long-Term Commitment to Technical Stack New IT requires an architecture that facilitates companies to create platforms that could integrate applications more easily and quickly compared to traditional systems. Decoupling monolithic systems via API and micro-service enablement would make the enterprise nimbler in delivery: a clear requirement for real innovation. New IT architecture needs to be more resilient than that of traditional systems in order to help bring products and services to market more quickly. That often requires the capability to link seamlessly with a variety of older legacy systems. One major hospitality and entertainment company uses remote digital devices to engage people as they visit, delivering a more personalized experience. To make that happen, however, the device s architecture had to blend seamlessly with multiple new and legacy systems. A company named IFTTT (for, IF This, Then That ), enables customers to download a mobile phone app with an architecture that facilitates it to easily integrate other apps using if-this-then-that recipes. For example, a user can create a recipe that automatically turns on her house lights via a home automation app when the phone s GPS sensor signals that she s approaching her driveway. 8 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

9 ALIGNING TEAMS FOR PROGRESS Facilitating progressive teamwork usually presents a challenge because because it requires companies to organize people in innovative ways and make them accountable for how the organization delivers technology. Because each company typically has a unique culture and way of doing things, no set template for making this happen exists. Consequently, efforts could run into resistance. The primary problem stems from the dominant corporate organizational architype. Fortune 500 companies typical adhere to a vertical business model, where each independent business unit offers separate products and services to customers. But any given customer might seek a more lateral way of dealing with the company, buying products from one business that he or she wants to integrate with services from another. Because the customer experience moves horizontally across these business units, consumers become frustrated when they face hurdles in moving from one to another. Compare that to digital natives. Leading companies organize around the products and services they offer to help ensure a seamless end-to-end user experience. 9 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

10 By embracing a horizontal business model instead of a vertical one, Facebook has essentially tipped the standard Fortune 500 organization chart on its side. It s clearly a difficult change to make because most employees have built their careers within the vertical structure and would resist change. The companies that do make this shift would become more agile, much faster and better able to deliver products and services to market quickly. What s more, the quality and market suitability of those offerings would increase significantly, ultimately drawing customers to them. The key principle here involves eliminating handoffs in the software delivery lifecycle by entirely integrating it. Ideally, a single team should handle software delivery in a robust stream, which requires companies to think about this process differently. Tools and approaches, such as DevOps and lean thinking, can support this more iterative, agile delivery cycle. 10 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

11 FINDING A PLACE TO START As company leaders contemplate the implications of New IT, getting there probably looks like a formidable challenge. Fortunately, it s a well-marked path, easily broken into manageable segments for those leaders who want to know what to do next Monday morning and every week, month and year after that. Four suggestions could help companies kick off their New IT transformations effectively. 1 KNOW WHERE TO START AND START FAST 2 ESTABLISH MULTI-SPEED DELIVERY IN CORE APPLICATIONS 3 ALIGN FOR LONG-TERM PROGRESS 4 FOSTER NEW SKILLS AND CULTURE KNOW WHERE TO START AND START FAST. Prioritize areas with the greatest potential for accelerated innovation and differentiation. Employ digital, customer-facing systems of engagement. ESTABLISH MULTI-SPEED DELIVERY IN CORE APPLICATIONS. Decouple core systems to help increase speed where it s needed by adopting new practices such as agile, continuous delivery and flexible architectures based on APIs, microservices and virtualized cloud solutions. ALIGN FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS. Break down traditional barriers between the businesses and IT to facilitate the shift to an interactive, software-driven future. FOSTER NEW SKILLS AND CULTURE. The build-measure-learn model required to support accelerated innovation often works best in a transformed corporate culture. 11 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

12 STARTING YOUR OWN NEW IT REVOLUTION Challenged by native digital interlopers, incumbents across industries need to come to terms with the new competitive environment, and do it quickly. They must realize this isn t a turnkey revolution simply buying new technology isn t the answer. To acheive real market advantages, leaders need to commit to a transformation that starts with new information technologies but also seeks better ways to deliver those objectives. That often requires them to reassess the company s very culture and organization. 12 UNLEASHING NEW IT COPYRIGHT 2017 ACCENTURE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

13 AUTHORS MARK MILLER Managing Director Communications, Media & Technology New IT Global Lead MAX FURMANOV Managing Director Accenture Technology Emerging Technology Global Lead ABOUT ACCENTURE Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions underpinned by the world s largest delivery network Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With approximately 425,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to help improve the way the world works and lives. Visit us at This document makes descriptive reference to trademarks that may be owned by others. The use of such trademarks herein is not an assertion of ownership of such trademarks by Accenture and is not intended to represent or imply the existence of an association between Accenture and the lawful owners of such trademarks. Copyright 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture. This document is produced by consultants at Accenture as general guidance. It is not intended to provide specific advice on your circumstances. If you require advice or further details on any matters referred to, please contact your Accenture representative. Links to websites which are not maintained by Accenture but third parties, Accenture is not responsible for the content on such sites and Accenture cannot confirm the accuracy or reliability of such sources or information.