Accenture Technology Vision 2014 Every Business …...Big companies are back in the digital game...
Transcript of Accenture Technology Vision 2014 Every Business …...Big companies are back in the digital game...
From Digitally Disrupted to Digital Disrupter
Accenture Technology Vision 2014
Every Business Is a Digital Business
Accenture Technology Vision for Oracle
Big companies are back in the digital gameWith that bold vision, Accenture kicked off its
Accenture Technology Vision 2014 report. It’s a
vision that is shared deeply by Oracle, Accenture’s
long-time partner in helping so many of those large
companies vault toward the next levels of growth
and become truly digital businesses.
Together, Accenture and Oracle see a major shift
under way in the marketplace. We see the new
momentum in digital innovation being driven not
by the Instagrams and TripAdvisors and Airbnbs
but—for the first time in a long time—by the Tescos
and GEs and Disneys. Big really is the next big thing:
backed by their deep resources, enormous scale, and
process discipline, many of the traditional Global
1,000 are rewriting entire chapters of the digital
playbook.
Large companies are making a concerted push to
transform themselves from followers to leaders
in digital. For business leaders everywhere, the
next three years will be about determining their
organizations’ pace in this digital race—and their
place in the new digital world. The first movers
are already poised to take advantage of the many
recent technology advances in ways that promise to
upend the expectations of industry observers and
consumers alike.
Accenture and Oracle see eye to eye on how
to help accelerate the digital directions of the
biggest companies. It’s not important whether that
alignment is best demonstrated by the Accenture
Foundation Platform for Oracle, or by Accenture’s
embrace of pre-engineered solutions such as Oracle
Big Data Appliance, or by the cutting-edge work of
the Accenture Analytics Innovation Center. What
really matters is that both partners share a vision
of a digital future that is broader still than that
glimpsed by the new breed of corporate digerati.
That nuanced vision is expressed perfectly in this
document. Building on the Accenture Technology
Vision 2014 report from Accenture Technology
Labs, we apply the lens of Accenture’s and Oracle’s
blended expertise to demonstrate how our
combined approach maps to the six technology
vectors described in the report—from its spotlight
on the digital-physical blur to the push for
architected resilience.
Just as the Accenture Technology Labs’ report
every year provides a richly detailed view from
which business leaders in every industry can draw
insight, inspiration, and excitement about where
digital technologies can take their organizations,
this Accenture-Oracle summary points to the many
practical ways in which those leaders can act now
to realize their digital aspirations.
#techv i s i on2014
2
1 + 1 = >> 2
Accenture and Oracle have one of the strongest
and most strategic alliances in the global IT-
services sector. Accenture has been delivering
Oracle-based solutions in almost every industry
for more than 23 years.
With deep insights, proven experience,
industrialized delivery capabilities, and more
than 52,000 skilled Oracle professionals around
the globe, Accenture is uniquely qualified to
provide strategy, implementation, upgrade,
and application-outsourcing solutions across
the entire Oracle suite of products. This suite
includes products such as Oracle E-Business
Suite, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Oracle Retail,
Siebel, and Oracle Fusion Middleware.
Accenture also brings innovative methodologies,
tools, and accelerators that enable rapid
implementation of quality solutions that are
sustainable, affordable, and predictable, while
mitigating risk. Accenture demonstrates its
innovation by providing strong points of view,
leading practices, and assets that are unique and
highly differentiated across industry, function,
and technology.
Central to the strategic nature of the Accenture-
Oracle relationship is each side’s commitment
to investing in significant resources to address
their joint customer needs. Two examples of
Accenture’s activities include the Accenture
Foundation Platform for Oracle, a development
accelerator for Oracle Fusion Middleware, and
the Accenture Oracle Engineered Systems
Center of Excellence, which lets clients “try
before they buy” by assessing proof-of-concept
demonstrations.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
3
Digital blurs with physical as intelligence moves to the edgeThe installed base of the Internet of Things is estimated to
reach approximately 212 billion in 2020. About 30 billion
of those will be connected things—devices that operate
autonomously, whether they are surveillance drones, smart
watches, or intelligent sensors in remote oilfields.
That is a whole lot of intelligence moving to “the edge.”
#techv i s i on2014
4
The fact is that the physical world is coming online
as objects, devices, and machines acquire more
digital “smarts.” The Accenture Technology Vision
2014 report from Accenture Technology Labs notes
that this wave of intelligent interfaces allows more
and more decisions to be made on the edge—at the
point where digital and physical worlds converge—
rather than in a centralized manner.i The decisions
can be made when and where they’re needed
in informed, social, easy-to-use ways, allowing
companies and governments to reimagine the
possibilities for engaging with their customers
and citizens.
Accenture and Oracle are well placed to help
businesses take advantage of this digital-physical
blur. At a minimum, Oracle’s integrated and
engineered solutions help simplify the architecture
and infrastructure of business analytics, allowing
data and insights to flow to users, partners, and
consumers as simply as possible.
So what does the digital-physical blur look like
in everyday life? A few examples: Smartphones
have turned their owners into digitally augmented
versions of themselves—able to catalog and
quantify actions throughout the day and access,
create, and share an astonishing array of pertinent
information that can enable faster, better decisions.
“Wearable” computers—think of fitness monitors
such as Nike’s FuelBand and Adidas’s miCoach—
give users the on-the-spot information they need
to make decisions about running another lap or
pushing for a personal best. Autonomous drones—
once the sole province of the military—are being
used by police precincts across the U.S. And devices
such as Google Glass will add many more layers of
intelligence to everyday experiences.
Accenture helps extend intelligence to the edges of the organization• As more and more objects, devices, and machines
acquire digital “smarts,” intelligence moves to the
edges of the organization.
• Autonomous devices, such as sensors and
drones, are not the only instances of this digital-
physical blur. With so many people now carrying
smartphones and tablets, employees have the
capabilities to make bigger business decisions on
their own.
• As intelligence moves to the edge, decisions can
be made exactly when and where they’re needed
in informed, social, easy-to-use ways, so that
organizations can reimagine the possibilities for
engaging their customers.
• Accenture sees that as intelligence moves to
the edge, analytics must be centralized and
personalized so that employees and customers
can readily get the information they need to
make quick decisions.
• Accenture’s and Oracle’s delivery of easy-to-
build mobile business-intelligence applications
can dramatically improve decision making at the
point of customer contact.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
5
What’s emerging is more than just an Internet of
things; it’s a new layer of connected intelligence
that augments the actions of individuals, automates
processes, and incorporates digitally empowered
machines into our lives. These cyber-physical
systems sense their environments and respond
appropriately in real time, making it possible for
users to make better-informed decisions within
windows of opportunity that can create competitive
advantage.
The pivotal point is that the sheer quantity of these
edge devices is increasing as dramatically as their
prices are dropping. In tandem, available bandwidth
is soaring, global IP traffic is expected to nearly
double from 2013 through 2016, and broadband
speed is expected to more than double. Real-time
analytics are proliferating, too. By 2017, more than
50 percent of analytics implementations will use
event data streams generated from instrumented
machines, applications, and individuals.
Employees can now add more intelligence to the edge But autonomous devices are not the only
manifestation of the digital-physical blur. Given
that so many people now carry intelligent devices
such as smartphones, employees have the capability
to sense and respond in unprecedented ways—and
to make more significant business decisions on
their own.
As the line between the digital and physical
continues to blur, new windows of opportunity
are opening for the enterprise. Many traditional
companies are looking at these opportunities
as ways to leapfrog online competitors, create
immersive real-world experiences for consumers,
and gain market share. In addition, every company
now has the opportunity to not just gather insights
for making smart business decisions but also to turn
those decisions into actions—in real time, in the
real world. The explosion in intelligent capabilities is
rapidly reshaping established operations, paving the
way for industry disruption on a massive scale.
Both Accenture and Oracle recognize that if
intelligence is to be extended to the edges of the
organization, information must be contextual
and performance must be just-in-time. As such,
analytics are often centralized to provide contextual
relevance by using diverse data sets that provide
aggregated insights to decision makers.
Specifically, the Oracle Real-Time Decisions (Oracle
RTD) platform uses adaptive and predictive analytic
models to determine the right information for the
right person and context, while the company’s
in-memory databases and Engineered Systems
provide performance that matches the window of
opportunity for that data to provide the insights
necessary to make decisions.
The Oracle RTD platform combines rules and
predictive analytics to power solutions for real-time
enterprise decision management, enabling real-time
intelligence to be built into any business process
or customer interaction. Oracle RTD is adaptive: it
can learn over time, which significantly increases its
long-term value to the enterprise.
#techv i s i on2014
6
In parallel, businesses can test new combinations
of traditional and nontraditional data sources using
Oracle Endeca Information Discovery (OEID) to
unlock new analytical opportunities. OEID enables
“self-service” business intelligence: users can upload
their own data into the application in addition
to the sanctioned data—or even create their own
applications from scratch. In effect, OEID enables
faster decision making by pushing data access and
control to the edge.
Improving decision making at the point of customer contactAt the same time, Accenture’s and Oracle’s delivery
of easy-to-build mobile business-intelligence
applications can markedly improve decision making
at the point of customer contact. Oracle has
recently introduced Oracle Business Intelligence
Mobile App Designer, a solution that allows business
users to very quickly create interactive analytical
apps and share with any mobile device, without
needing to know how to code or use HTML5.
It is still early days for organizations that see benefit
in extending intelligence to the edge. However, the
City of New York provides one of the most positive
examples to date. Its integrated 311 solution,
created with Accenture’s help, provides a single
point of entry to city government for all residents,
visitors and businesses. A full 85 percent of 311
callers have their inquiry resolved during their initial
call. (See sidebar.)
Must-ask questionsHere are the kinds of questions that business
leaders must ask if they want to get the benefits
of intelligence moving to the edge.
• What are businesses in other industries (and
perhaps in our own industry) doing to extend
intelligence to the edge? Are they, for instance,
enhancing consumer experiences, enabling field
workers, and embedding intelligence in their
physical assets?
• How could our organization benefit from
more data about daily operations—either from
automated sensing devices or from enabled
workers in the field?
• Do we have an inventory of the intelligent
devices or better-enabled workers already at the
edge of our network? If not, how can we create
one?
• What can we learn from our customer-facing
business units about the types of edge decisions
they already make? How could these business
units benefit further with real-time analytics at
the point of action?
• What do we need to do to extend our
infrastructure to support enterprise mobility for
core business functions?
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
7
In general, though, most organizations will take
a more cautious approach. Accenture anticipates
that businesses will first expand their use of edge
intelligence to make current operations more
efficient. Then, some of the pioneers will see ways
to disrupt their industries (or other industries)
using cyber-physical systems—by changing users’
expectations of what is acceptable and normal.
These organizations are likely to adopt hybrid
data architectures that use solutions such as the
Oracle RTD platform to leverage traditional and
nontraditional automation in operational decisions.
The businesses that can properly leverage the
strengths of machines (precision and scale)
alongside the strengths of people (insight and
decisions) will be setting themselves up with
market-leading advantages. Together, Accenture
and Oracle can provide what’s needed to develop
that leverage.
#techv i s i on2014
8
New York City goes to the edge
When Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s
former mayor, took office, one of his priorities
was to offer New Yorkers better government
service, including systems and processes through
which residents could easily interact with city
agencies to receive information, file complaints,
and resolve issues. As it was, customers looking
for government assistance were confronted
with more than 4,000 entries covering 11 pages
in the city’s telephone book, and more than 40
resource-intensive call centers were required to
direct inquiries to the right city offices.
Mayor Bloomberg envisioned a high-performance,
centralized, all-purpose call facility, accessible
through the simple-to-remember 311 phone
number. Calls would be answered by live
operators who would quickly direct callers to the
information or resources they needed, at any
time of the day or night. This single, integrated
communication channel would manage all of
the city’s nonemergency service and information
requests.
Working closely with the city’s Department of
Information Technology & Telecommunications
and the mayor’s Office of Operations, Accenture
led multiple teams in the efficient building
and launching of the new Customer Service
Center and 311 hotline. With Accenture’s help,
the city has applied best practices in customer
relationship management to transform
service delivery and, ultimately, achieve high
performance.
The 311 initiative has been highly successful.
The center represents nearly 300 city, state,
and federal agencies that offer nearly 4,000
services—with more than 400 representatives
answering calls around the clock and
information available in 170 languages. Visits to
311 Online, launched in 2009, total nearly 7
million, and more than 300,000 text sessions
have been supported since 2011; 85 percent of
calls are answered in 30 seconds or less. Overall,
New York City has saved money from the
consolidation of agency call centers and expects
to save millions more over the long term.ii
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
9
Tapping the workforce you never knew you hadImagine a “dream team” workforce—one that can deftly
handle virtually every task your organization needs done
and that comes without the challenges of the traditional
employer-employee arrangement.
That dream team can be assembled now.
#techv i s i on2014
10
In fact, companies such as Procter & Gamble
and Eli Lilly already make wide use of Web-based
innovation networks to augment and accelerate
market research and product development. Similarly,
GE and MasterCard are harnessing crowdsourcing
companies such as Kaggle—a global network of
computer scientists, mathematicians, and data
scientists who compete to solve problems ranging
from airline flight optimization to optimization of
retail-store locations.
Welcome to the new world of crowdsourcing, as
depicted in the Accenture Technology Vision 2014
report.iii Consider almost any challenge—early
detection of driver drowsiness or the predictability
of drug targets or electric-only updates to hybrid
cars—and it’s likely there are already communities
of shared interest that can competently address
that challenge.
The individuals involved may be around the corner
or on the other side of the world; what they have
in common is the experience and expertise to solve
the problem, as well as the motivation (and, in
some cases, the passion) to do so. This expanded
workforce also offers real scale and speed; it can be
put to work on problems that may be too large or
too expensive to solve internally.
The tasks involved may be as simple as data
entry or as complex as predictive modeling. The
individuals—the problem solvers—may work on a
project for its duration or participate in just a part
of it. They may be paid, or they may compete for
prizes or recognition. But whatever their incentives
and spheres of interest, there is a unifying feature:
their contributions are made possible by digital
technology—specifically the cloud and social and
collaboration tools.
“There are two ways to build things,” the chief
executive of one crowdsourcing company told an
industry publication. “You can hire the relevant
Accenture helps tap the “expanded workforce” using Oracle technologies• Cloud, social, and collaboration technologies
allow organizations to tap into vast pools of
human resources around the world.
• Channeling these efforts to drive business goals
is a challenge, but the opportunity is enormous.
• Organizations need to develop an approach
that can help them access the immense, agile
workforce.
• Accenture can help accelerate the
implementation of new communities and provide
the control that’s required to engage the crowd.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
11
Marketing moves toward perfect information With effective digital tools now at their disposal,
enterprises can segment markets much more finely.
Accenture has developed an asset—the Customer
Operations Services Portal of the Future—that
integrates more than 20 of Oracle’s products across
its customer-experience portfolio. It demonstrates
how fine-grained segmentations, utilizing data from
a variety of sources (including social), can create
a personalized experience to drive engagement
and revenues. Crucially, the benefits from such
personalized customer interactions can extend
beyond immediate engagement to additional profit
resulting from commerce, loyalty, and advocacy.
For its part, Oracle provides solutions that enable
companies to perform those granular segmentations
and apply them across interactions with customers.
Marketing can use crowdsourcing to test ideas in
these segments. The tests can be created using
combinations of demographic information, purchase
history, interaction history (for example, Web site
visits and products viewed), and data from social
media. It’s also possible to personalize interactions
across channels and customer touch points using
these same segments.
Taking innovation off its leashInnovation is happening organically everywhere,
whether business leaders are aware of it or not.
As with marketing activities, Oracle’s suite of SRM
tools allows companies to follow very specific
people to solve a problem, or you can organize in
the cloud to get better ideas faster.”
This is where Oracle and Accenture come in.
The solutions they provide can help make
crowdsourcing a practical, easily implemented
reality for enterprises everywhere. For instance,
Oracle Service Cloud (RightNow) allows companies
to put the crowd to work in customer service.
By creating communities across digital channels,
including Facebook, customers can help each other
and collaborate. Furthermore, Oracle WebCenter
allows companies to create innovation communities
through which members can share ideas and
drive innovation.
One of the first steps toward better engagement of
the crowd is to understand what already exists—
what communities exist, what conversations and
ideas resonate, and where there is momentum. The
Oracle Social Relationship Management (SRM) suite
is a cloud service that can quickly enable a business
to make such assessments. First, through social
listening, the business can better understand what’s
out there today—what topics people are engaged in,
what’s the sentiment, and, to some extent, what’s
the intent behind these topics. Social listening is a
key source of input for formulating a crowdsourcing
plan, and it can be a quick win.
The Oracle Endeca Information Discovery (OEID)
platform creates more opportunities for quick wins.
By combining different types of data (for example,
unstructured data from social media and existing
external communities combined with internal
data), an enterprise can iteratively test and explore
theories in the data without needing to create data
warehouse reports.
The crowdsourcing theme is bigger and broader
than there is space to cover in this report, but two
areas merit a closer look.
#techv i s i on2014
12
conversations about innovation on social media and
then to engage with the pertinent communities.
The same suite of tools can help a company to
develop new social-media properties and begin
to incorporate all of them into the enterprise
(for example, by integrating them with existing
customer-support processes). The Oracle SRM suite
not only enables a business to understand what’s
happening within communities of interest but it also
makes it easier to engage the crowd and put it to
work solving problems.
Of course, enterprises cannot depend solely on
existing or even emerging innovation solutions.
They must be willing to create platforms and
communities themselves. Here too, the solutions
from Oracle and Accenture can help design, build,
and nurture those communities, whether they
“meet” on social-media channels or through
company-owned Web sites.
Dealing with the increased security risksLast, Accenture and Oracle have the resources
and tools necessary to deal with the new levels
of complexity and risk generated by the widening
workforce. To engage the crowd is to require more
control over who accesses organizations’ multiple
systems. Oracle’s Identity and Access Management
Suite Plus, bolstered by Accenture’s Identity and
Access Management services, helps enterprises
reduce costs, minimize risks, and meet regulatory
compliance by implementing processes and tools
to centralize and streamline the management of
users’ access and entitlements within the extended
enterprise.
Must-ask questionsThe companies that get crowdsourcing right will
equip themselves with better customer insight
and more innovative products and services, and
they will have an unprecedented array of talent
and skills at their disposal. Here are some of
the questions that business leaders should ask
themselves.
• How might our market research, product
development, and innovation functions benefit
from using expanded workforce platforms?
• How can we engage with existing online
communities in support of our core business
functions? Can we create a catalog of the online
communities that are specific to market research
and product development?
• Which of our business activities are most easily
broken into smaller independent tasks that are
suitable for crowdsourcing? Who will lead the
pilot programs for those tasks?
• Can we develop an authorized and trusted-talent
cloud that encompasses an expanded workforce
community?
• In which areas can we achieve quick wins and
create business value to prove that this approach
can work?
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
13
Unlocking value from the data supply chainFew business leaders today can say that their organizations
are starving for data. Quite the opposite: most businesses
are wallowing in more data than they can effectively
utilize today. Few observers see that more clearly than
Oracle, which has 60 percent of the world’s data stored on
its databases, and the Accenture Technology Vision 2014
report observes that many businesses are in fact struggling
to access, share, and analyze much of the data they
already have.
#techv i s i on2014
14
The truth is that enterprise data is vastly
underutilized. Data ecosystems are complex and
littered with data silos, limiting the value that
organizations can get out of their own data because
it is so difficult to access. Few companies have
mastered the concepts at the foundation of modern
data management—for example, the mobility and
portability of data, its structure and velocity, data as
a “saleable” product, and its valuation in open data
exchanges.
To truly unlock that value, companies must start
treating data more as a supply chain, putting it into
circulation by enabling it to flow easily and usefully
through the entire organization—and eventually
throughout their ecosystems of partners too.
The Accenture Technology Vision 2014 report notes
that the challenge of unlocking the value of data
is exacerbated by rising data volumes.iv The size
of the digital universe is doubling every two years
and is set to grow to 40 trillion gigabytes, or, to put
this into perspective, more than 5,200 gigabytes
for every man, woman, and child by 2020. Data
from external sources such as social media, mobile
devices, and point-of-sale sources can add new
decision-making dimensions to the analytics mix,
with the most powerful insights emerging when a
company can effectively blend external and internal
data. Yet observers say that most companies won’t
be able to get competitive advantage from the big
data at their disposal—not, at least, anytime soon.
Until recently, much of this external data did not
exist. Where big-data sets could be identified, high
storage costs and a dearth of mature processing
tools were barriers to realizing its true value. The
good news, though, is that the tools and technology
required to build a data platform, ensuring data
access and velocity, are available and in use.
Accenture helps extract hidden value in the data supply chain• Complex data ecosystems, siloed data, and
rising data volumes are limiting the value that
organizations can get out of their data.
• Companies can achieve powerful insights
when they can blend external and internal data
effectively.
• The introduction of Oracle Big Data Appliance
changes the game by allowing companies to
handle data volumes at scale.
• A seamless, integrated data supply chain
experience can be realized by leveraging Oracle’s
Master Data Management Architecture.
• Accenture has a dedicated data practice of more
than 1,300 practitioners who help plan, drive,
and deliver an individualized data journey for
each client.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
15
For example, 20 percent of enterprises are reported
to be using NoSQL already, and tools such as Oracle
Big Data Appliance are engineered to process data
volumes at scale. Coupling these technologies with
the more traditional master data management
(MDM) solutions, the integrated, end-to-end data
supply chain is finally possible.
So what exactly does a data supply chain look
like? It begins when data is created, imported, or
combined with other data. The data then moves,
flows, and transforms through the supply chain,
incrementally acquiring value. And although there
may be diversions along the way, such as when
a data “product” is removed for repairs (in other
words, data cleansing), the supply chain ends
with a valuable insight as its output. Guiding
this movement is a data services platform.
Analogous to the blueprint of a factory floor, this
platform provides the structure for the intelligent
transportation of data throughout the organization.
It enables the effective supply chain—fit to strategy
and designed to drive outcomes.
Oracle recognizes that data must move seamlessly
and quickly throughout the information supply
chain, maintaining the quality and integrity of the
data. The Oracle MDM Architecture addresses the
end-to-end information supply chain, from data
creation to distribution to analytics. Also, Oracle
Data Relationship Governance is typically involved
in the first element of the data supply chain—the
creation of data. Its workflow and collaboration
features enable end users to create and modify
master data.
The journey to an optimized data supply chain
begins with a clear, cohesive data strategy. A key
component of this strategy involves development
of an understanding of the place from which the
journey is beginning—or the “current state” of
data and information. Oracle provides two primary
solutions for accelerating this understanding: Oracle
Enterprise Data Quality Profile and Audit (as part
of the Enterprise Data Quality Family) and Oracle
Endeca Information Discovery.
The Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Profile and
Audit solution provides the capability to quickly
and easily audit data for potential anomalies in the
data. Business and IT can leverage the results to
identify root cause issues in the data supply chain
and the business impacts of those deficiencies.
Complementing that solution is Oracle Endeca
Information Discovery (OEID), which enables
business users to combine, explore, and visualize
information—both structured and unstructured—
from a wide variety of disparate sources. This
provides a powerful platform for gaining insight
into information relationships that might have been
unrecognized previously.
But arguably the most powerful response to
the data-supply-chain concept is Oracle’s big
data solutions. Oracle describes big data as “the
electricity of the 21st century—a new kind of power
that transforms everything it touches in business,
government, and private life.” In business terms,
it refers primarily to data that businesses do not
control or own. Recognizing that companies need
solutions to acquire, organize, and analyze those
volumes of data from disparate sources, Oracle has
developed its big-data solution, with a portfolio
of powerful products comprising Oracle Big Data
Appliance, Oracle Big Data Connectors, Oracle
NoSQL Database, and in-Database Analytics.v
#techv i s i on2014
16
For its part, Accenture translates the enterprise’s
larger questions about big data into the
practicalities of what data is needed where and
when, and by which users. Accenture properly and
promptly identifies the enterprise’s requirements for
specific Oracle solutions and ensures that not only
are those solutions properly implemented and run
but also that the enterprise has the skill sets and
support needed to maximize its investments in
the solutions.
Specifically, Accenture works closely with Oracle
and its clients to design, build, and run the
underpinning information strategy, architecture,
and governance that enable a “single source of the
truth” for all data, wherever it resides. Accenture
empowers executives, giving them the tools they
need to analyze that data effectively and deliver
the intelligence and insights that enable smarter
decision making, actions, and outcomes. Just one
snapshot: the Accenture Analytics Innovation
Center for Oracle develops analytics solutions that
are helping organizations maximize the power of
Oracle Exalytics and Oracle Business Intelligence
Suite Enterprise Edition (OBIEE) and move to a new
level of performance.
Must-ask questionsAny initiative to get data into circulation—to
realize its full potential across an enterprise’s
business ecosystem—has to start with the right
decisions, which are the product of thoughtful
debate, sparked by the right kinds of questions.
• Do we have a detailed inventory of our data,
beginning with our most frequently accessed and
time-relevant data?
• What will it take to identify the data silos in our
organization (for example, human resources,
finance, and engineering) and to pinpoint other
areas in our organization in which data could be
useful?
• How can we identify sources of external data
that will complement the data that we “own”
already?
• How can we empower our business users to be
value creators in the data supply chain? Where
could we sell our data? Who should investigate
opportunities to monetize it?
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
17
Hardware matters again (a lot) Facebook designed and built its own servers, claiming
that it can build its data centers at one-fifth the cost of
a traditional data center. That statistic points to the need
for all CIOs to get smart about the advantages and trade-
offs associated with the hardware that powers their
data systems.
#techv i s i on2014
18
After at least a decade out of the spotlight, the
hardware world is once again a hotbed of new
development as demand soars for bigger, faster,
lower-cost data centers. In fact, hardware is
becoming a crucial consideration as businesses
strive to “go digital,” as discussed in the Accenture
Technology Vision 2014 report.vi
As more and more businesses come to rely
on supersize, superscalable data centers—the
“hyperscale” systems run by the major cloud-service
providers such as Amazon and Google, as well as
the growing number of systems that companies
are building themselves—their IT leaders must keep
track of innovations in hardware technologies
such as low-power CPUs, solid-state data storage,
and in-memory computing. Current and future
innovations will augment the performance of every
enterprise’s servers and data centers, enabling the
next generation of infrastructure to support their
digital transformation.
The name of the hyperscale game is total cost of
ownership (TCO)—the collective push for higher
compute densities, increased modularity, greater
utilization, less custom development, and greater ease
of use. Oracle translates this into the basic idea of
“simplifying IT”—a strategic directive that emphasizes
simplified systems design, where software and
hardware are engineered together. (This model is
widely recognized in the Apple ecosystem, and such
integration is also central to the effectiveness of
Google’s and Facebook’s data centers.)
It is Oracle’s and Accenture’s belief that the next
wave of data center computing will be characterized
by purpose-built machines that optimize for
particular types of workload and tackle traditional
bottlenecks in system performance. This belief is
echoed by the analyst community. One leading
analyst firm predicts that by next year, more than
a third of total server shipped value will be in the
form of integrated systems.
Accenture ensures the best hardware performance as demand soars for bigger, faster, lower-cost data centers• The name of the hyperscale game is total cost of
ownership. TCO is the collective push for higher
compute densities, increased modularity, greater
utilization, less custom development, and greater
ease of use.
• Companies will see the benefits of hyperscale
innovation trickle into data centers in the form of
cost reduction.
• As companies digitize their businesses, these
systems become essential to enabling growth
and reducing complexity.
• Hardware is a crucial consideration as businesses
strive to go digital.
• Organizations need to develop approaches that
cut implementation time to a matter of weeks.
• Accenture’s implementation of Oracle Engineered
Systems emphasizes delivery of the highest
possible performance, removing bottlenecks in
systems and applications.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
19
The idea is warmly welcomed by enterprises
themselves: in industries ranging from hospitality
to banking, there is recognition (and proof from
clients) that optimized systems such as Oracle
Engineered Systems can reduce data-center
operating costs by at least 20 percent, freeing
up resources that can be applied to higher-value
business activities.
Oracle and Accenture are ratcheting up the
TCO argument. For its part, Oracle is achieving
unprecedented levels of interoperability across its
expanded product lines because the company can
now provide what amounts to vertically integrated
systems. The objective of offering preintegrated,
workload-optimized systems is to strip out
significant amounts of labor—not just upfront
but also throughout the life cycle of the services
delivered to the business.
Integration happens at multiple layers of the
technology stack, starting with best-in-class
component technology, databases, middleware,
and applications, expanding to tightly integrated,
highly optimized, engineered systems for specific
and general-purpose workloads. Users benefit since,
for instance, Oracle software runs faster and more
efficiently on Oracle storage: it enables integrated,
automatic provisioning and management, with
on-demand storage performance and streamlined
end-to-end data movement and protection. Another
good example: Oracle storage is being integrated
with Oracle VM and storage-management tools to
reduce traditional storage-management workloads.
It is important to point out that Oracle is unique
in owning IP in each layer of the technology
stack—applications, middleware, and hardware.
Oracle owns the source code, and, as a result, it
can optimize its hardware around its software—an
exceptional advantage that brings substantial
benefits for clients. Furthermore, it helps that Oracle
has products in each layer of the stack that have
achieved supremacy in their markets. (For example,
the company’s database products have claimed
more than 48 percent of the global database
market.vii) Accenture brings its integration strengths
to bear by turning Oracle’s whole-stack positioning
into practical, rapid benefits for the complex
challenges of clients in a host of industries.
Accenture’s implementation of Oracle solutions
emphasizes delivery of the highest possible
performance—removing bottlenecks in systems, in
applications, and between systems and applications.
In the storage arena, for instance, this involves
Accenture’s continued development of application-
aware storage. Accenture’s continual push for
efficiency means that users can purchase less
storage for their needs and run the storage systems
with leaner resources.
The benefits are apparent at one leading national
retail chain whose aggressive expansion has
required rapid, comprehensive responses to
provision the IT systems for each new store.
Previously, the retailer’s best-of-breed approach
meant that it took up to four months to provision
each new retail footprint. Using the Oracle Exadata
Database Machine—central to Oracle’s integrated
Engineered Systems approach—the retailer has cut
implementation time to a matter of weeks.
Of course, enterprise customers are just as eager to
realize the benefits of raw performance gains. That
is especially so as they access increasing quantities
of data and strive to apply analytics tools to derive
real-time business insights, and many more of
them. This is where the most recent innovations in
hardware performance promise the biggest payoff.
#techv i s i on2014
20
A case in point: last September, Larry Ellison
announced an in-memory option for Oracle’s
flagship 12c database. The option is designed for
both transactional and analytic workloads; Oracle’s
targets are analytics queries that run 100 times
faster with a doubling in throughput for transaction
processing.
At the same time, business users, who care deeply
about system stability and reliability, are acutely
aware that any downtime means huge opportunity
costs—not to mention the possibility of lasting
damage to relations with key customers and
perhaps to the company’s brand itself. Together,
Accenture and Oracle are working hard to ensure
that downtime is very rare. A few snapshots: Oracle
Engineered Systems are designed for no-single-
point-of-failure redundancy and built-in disaster
recovery. And all Engineering System patch bundles
are delivered fully tested and containing firmware,
device drivers, OS patches, management agent
patches, system software, and middleware or
database patches.
Accenture is in lockstep: in 2013, it debuted the
Center of Excellence for Oracle Engineered Systems,
a virtual center in which clients can test process-
specific Engineered Systems products. The center
seeks to address enterprise performance, reliability,
and scalability concerns when deploying such
offerings. Each environment is built to run Oracle’s
Exadata database machine, Exalogic elastic cloud,
and Exalytics in-memory systems through an
Oracle-powered cloud platform.
The approach is paying off. In candid conversations,
Exadata customers routinely discuss improved TCO
and ROI. But the surprise benefit is in what those
customers volunteer about their systems’ improved
stability and reliability.
Must-ask questionsToday’s IT leaders must fully evaluate the hardware
behind the hyperscale systems on which their
companies increasingly depend. Clearly, the
choice of hardware will rest very much on each
enterprise’s specific application needs and what
its usage patterns will look like. But the following
questions are typical of what CIOs should be
asking now.
• Can our applications run on low-power CPUs, or
would GPUs be more efficient for computation?
• Does the code for our critical business insights
need to be rewritten to take advantage of new
technologies?
• To what extent can the data center scale up for
a pharmaceutical client, say, if the client starts
putting most of its clinical-trial simulations in the
cloud?
• Do our business requirements mean we are
better off with flash, in-memory, or hard-disk
storage?
• Have we looked at how we can optimize simple
layers of the architecture, such as the database
layer, to perform 50 percent faster for half the
cost, while providing business value that drives
new decisions and behaviors?
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
21
Business software that’s more like apps? Users of Android phones have access to more than
1.1 million apps—more than 900,000 of them free and
nearly 60,000 of those categorized for “business.”viii Imagine
the possibilities if enterprises had comparable access to
such low-cost, easily deployed applications.
#techv i s i on2014
22
In fact, there is real movement in that direction,
according to the Accenture Technology Vision
2014 report from Accenture Technology Labs.ix The
way that businesses build software is changing:
mimicking the shift in the consumer world,
organizations are rapidly moving from enterprise
applications to apps. Eager for relief from some of
their biggest pain points—especially their systems’
lack of agility—business leaders have been searching
for software that is far more nimble than the legacy
systems they’ve relied on for decades.
There will always be big, complex enterprise-
software systems to support large organizations,
but there is a marked shift toward simpler, more
modular, and more customized apps. The push is
coming from the accelerating pace of IT change:
the faster businesses can create and launch new
applications in today’s turbulent markets, the better
they can innovate, collaborate, improve customer
experiences, and enrich personal interactions.
Users are raising the temperature too. Customers
and employees are looking for consumer-grade
experiences. They are pressing IT to give them, in
the workplace, the kinds of low-cost, accessible, and
often intelligent apps that they use every day on
their own mobile devices.
Separating front-end applications from back-end servicesAccenture and Oracle are geared to help enterprises
move toward this new realm of enterprise
applications. The Accenture Technology Vision
2014 report makes it clear that the future lies in
separating applications from the back-end services.
(The outcomes are wins for both the IT side and the
business side: IT can concentrate on building solid
Accenture is helping clients address the shift toward simpler, more modular, and more customized apps • Adoption of mobile devices has changed the way
we think and work.
• The faster businesses can create and launch
new applications, the better they can innovate,
collaborate, improve customer experiences, and
enrich personal interactions.
• Users demand the same level of functionality,
access to services, and user experience that they
have become accustomed to on their personal
devices.
• To embrace mobility, businesses need to create
applications that satisfy all aspects of the
corporate environment.
• Accenture can implement a solid foundation for
building applications quickly across platforms
while addressing security, interface flexibility,
and time to market.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
23
foundations for complex systems; the business gets
to focus on custom software that is flexible enough
to adapt to fast-changing market conditions.)
Oracle’s solutions use a service-oriented
architecture (SOA) to provide a modular approach
in which back-end tools and applications can offer
data and services through flexible middleware
solutions such as Oracle Fusion Middleware.
Those solutions can be provided to employees
and customers in forms that are appropriate to
their needs—on a mobile device or as a flexible
application running on a traditional desktop.
“Accelerator” tools such as Accenture Foundation
Platform for Oracle (AFPO) can make it easier to
connect a wide range of back-end services and
applications to mobile applications. Here’s a good
example of such connections in action: using
solutions that include Oracle E-Business Suite,
Oracle Identity & Access Management, and Oracle
WebCenter Portal, Accenture has created a human
capital management (HCM) mobile suite to support
time and expense reporting together with approval
processes that run on mobile devices (smartphones
and tablets) and desktop platforms.
For instance, an employee using her mobile device
to access her employer’s HCM system might want
to book vacation time and also record her time
using specific job codes. It’s easier to do both on the
fly when the architecture abstracts the front-end
application away from the back-end services: the
mobile app can record the time and send the data
to the back-end processing services. The same app
can record the vacation request and send that to a
different service.
Then a supervisor—based in the office or working
remotely using another mobile app—can review and
approve the time report and the vacation request.
At the same time, an HR analyst can use yet another
app to track employees’ vacation requests in
aggregate and create reports of future capacity for
management. In each case, the abstraction between
the back end, middleware, and application makes
the appropriate functionality available to fit each
user’s needs with a simple-to-use interface—much
like apps consumers use regularly on their mobile
devices.
The march toward mobileThe push toward flexible, app-like enterprise
software must—almost by definition—accommodate
the fast-expanding use of mobile devices. Accenture
and Oracle are striding ahead here, leveraging the
powerful capabilities of the Oracle Mobile Platform
to create and customize applications that run on
many types of mobile devices. Using cross-platform
and multichannel development tools, individual
applications can be built very quickly—very much in
sync with how most mobile apps are created today.
Crucially, key features such as security, interface
flexibility, and multiple-device support are built into
the core of the platform rather than added later.
Applications are created in a container form. That
is, all data associated with an application is not only
encrypted on the device but is also isolated from
other applications on that device. This capability is
what enables vital business practices such as bring-
your-own-device policies.
#techv i s i on2014
24
Over the longer term, Oracle’s solutions allow IT
systems to grow and evolve to fit the market’s
changing requirements. The SOA foundation of
those solutions means that other services can
be added to the back end with no impact on the
user-facing services. The middleware part of the
architecture allows existing back-end services to be
completely updated or replaced simply by modifying
the middleware interface—again without affecting
the user. Conversely, applications can use a simple
application-programming interface (API) to connect
to a wide range of services with no impact on the
back end. The upshot: regardless of the evolution
of mobile platforms and cloud computing, Oracle,
teamed with Accenture and using solutions such
as AFPO, can support an enterprise through the
entirety of its digital transformation.
The shift in business software development will
reverberate for IT leaders and business leaders alike:
they must soon decide not just who plays which
application-development role in their new digital
organizations but also how to transform the nature
of application development itself.
Accenture anticipates something of a resurgence
in custom development. Leading companies view
custom development as their best option for
pursuing the objectives of a digital business. We’re
confident that we’ll see more and more CIOs and IT
leaders sitting down with their business colleagues
to discuss how they can help facilitate the new
application-development trend.
Must-ask questionsWhat will it take to lay the foundation for
enterprise application development? Before
that overarching question can be answered, it’s
necessary to agree on responses to questions
like these.
• How well can we map cloud and mobile
apps against our existing service-oriented
architecture, application-programming-interface
management, and platform-as-a-service
investments? If we can do this fairly easily, how
soon can we create a strategy to separate our
back-end services from the front-end apps?
• How soon can we review and start updating our
app-process and app-governance strategy?
• What’s needed to design and pilot an enterprise
app store for distributing mobile and desktop
applications?
• Assuming we get good pilot results, how do
we create a multiyear road map to deliver the
remainder of our high-priority apps?
• How can we extend our ERP and custom back-
end systems using simple mobile interfaces
to reduce training costs and increase overall
employee efficiency?
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
25
Trying before buying
Accenture runs a network of labs in which clients
can try Oracle solutions without committing to
buy. The Accenture Analytics Innovation Center
for Oracle is a collaborative network of facilities
that help companies understand how to optimize
their use of data and analytics to produce better
business outcomes.
At each innovation center, Accenture specialists
start by helping visitors assess their own
business-intelligence challenges. They then help
them develop an analytics strategy, a proof of
concept, and a technology road map to get
the most value from their data. Accenture has
developed day-in-the-life scenarios for the
financial services, utilities, and communications
industries to help executives envision what is
possible for their companies’ business situations.
Most recently, Accenture launched an Oracle
Engineered Systems Center of Excellence—part
of the Innovation Center network. The center
hosts Oracle Exadata, Exalogic, and Exalytics
environments to allow companies to “try before
they buy.”
This new center brings together Accenture’s
functional and industry experience with leading
Oracle technologies. Before making significant
investments, clients can test their workloads
on Oracle Engineered Systems to get a picture
of how a similar setup could accelerate their
enterprise applications and strengthen their
analytics capabilities for performance and
business benefits.
#techv i s i on2014
26
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
27
Resilience is about having no downtime (none)Downtime in data centers costs 41 percent more than it did
just four years ago. That statistic alone ought to be enough
to stop most IT leaders in their tracks.
#techv i s i on2014
28
This statistic, one of the markers used in the
Accenture Technology Vision 2014 report, makes
a forceful argument for engineering resilience in
IT systems from day one.x The report explains that
resilience does not mean simply implementing
robust cyber-security structures and deploying
best-of-breed highly available systems. Instead,
it calls for a wholesale shift in mindset to the
idea of 100 percent uptime—a mindset shaped by
the wider context of business risk and by a deep
understanding of the constant threats of disruption
caused by everything from hurricanes and hackers
to internal upgrades.
Oracle and Accenture understand that resiliency
is the new high ground for CIOs who take their
strategic business roles seriously. A resiliency
mindset is all the more critical in the digital
era. Transforming to a digital business implicitly
increases a company’s exposure to risk through
IT failures. The more that business processes are
interconnected and automated, the more potential
points of failure there are.
A steep increase in cyber threats is piling on the
pressure. This is not just about gaining access to
systems; cybercriminals are also trying to bring
them down. Distributed denial of service (DDoS)
attacks are increasing in frequency and size; the
number of attacks has increased by more than
50 percent in 2013. At the same time, there is the
expectation of “always on” from business stakeholders.
In a digital world, whether your system is under
attack, hit by a storm, or just being updated, the
expectation is that it always works.
This is a reality that IT leaders everywhere must
grasp: failure is a normal operating condition. It
must be anticipated, accommodated, and designed
into IT systems.
Accenture is helping digital businesses succeed in an always-on world • A resiliency mindset is essential in the digital era
and is critical to the nonstop demands of the
digital business.
• Digital businesses must implement resiliency
practices to protect themselves from cyber
attacks and to prevent downtime
• A reality that IT leaders everywhere must grasp:
failure is a normal operating condition and must
be planned for.
• The Accenture Foundation Platform for Oracle
helps clients implement Oracle technology
to secure their businesses and maximize the
availability of their IT infrastructures.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
29
Today, the idea is no longer about designing for
“five nines” (99.999 percent) uptime; it’s about
supporting the nonstop business—literally 24 hours a
day, 365 days a year. If systems are to be as nonstop
as businesses need them to be, they can no longer
be designed just to specification or engineered to
handle only particular incidents. They must be
designed to work during failure and under attack.
Above all, the resiliency mindset is categorically not
about compliance. Compliance implies complacency.
In an always-on world, it is not enough to check the
Sarbanes-Oxley boxes, declaring that a particular
risk-management process is being followed.
Accenture implements Oracle solutions that are key
enablers of architected resilience. The solutions fall
into three buckets.
Always onAccenture’s Oracle Solutions enable an always-
on digital business with, for example, Oracle’s
public- and private-cloud offerings, which provide
elastic capability that can be available around
the clock and all over the globe. Accenture’s
private cloud for Oracle provides infrastructure
for custom applications as well as off-the-shelf
applications. It also opens the door to software-as-
a-service solutions that simplify the management
of applications and also increase availability by
leveraging shared infrastructure.
As part of this private-cloud offering, Accenture
has leveraged the Oracle Maximum Availability
Architecture (MAA) best-practices blueprint
(representing Oracle’s mandate to provide always-
on service), which spans Oracle Exadata Database
Machine, Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware,
Oracle Applications, and Oracle Enterprise Manager
Cloud Control, as well as third-party partner solutions.
The objective of MAA is to achieve the optimal
high-availability architecture at the lowest cost and
complexity.
SecurityBolstered by solutions from many of its recent
acquisitions, Oracle has steadily built security into
every layer of its stack, ensuring protection for
applications, middleware, and servers. Working with
Accenture’s widely recognized security experts—
professionals who have been championing active
defense systems for some time now—Oracle offers
active security and “defense in depth” features that
can be tuned and tested independently to ensure
the right amount of security rigor.
The Oracle Identity Management Suite (IdM)
covers the range of requirements needed for a
digital business, from managing user identities
(internal and external to the enterprise) to identity
governance, managing access to resources, and
storing identities through directory services. And
Accenture has taken Oracle’s portfolio of security
products and created AFPO, an accelerator that
stitches these products together and wraps them
with more than 200 successful implementations
to help accelerate the time to market of clients’
new solutions.
Clients now expect resiliency to be extended to
security beyond the core application. Accenture
addresses this by leveraging the AFPO Cluster
Configuration Guides as a starting point for each
product in the Oracle IdM suite. Accenture has used
these to install and configure the components for
high-availability architecture. The AFPO guides are
#techv i s i on2014
30
based on Oracle’s Enterprise Deployment Guides,
which include an integrated set of high-availability
solutions and best practices for improving resiliency
while reducing or eliminating both planned and
unplanned downtime.
Security is also central to Oracle’s core database
solutions, which use defense-in-depth features
to provide layered security: features such as a
database firewall, transparent data encryption, a
database vault, and data redaction. The security
characteristics also include securing APIs and
services with DMZ-class protection that defends
against cyber criminal activity including DDoS
attacks. These APIs and services are increasingly
important to businesses that see just how
interconnected their business ecosystems really are.
This layered approach provides multiple checkpoints
for security, minimizing the dangers of having
security risks including even a single point of
failure. Having this flexibility is crucial for securing
information, identifying vulnerabilities, and adapting
to ongoing and changing security environments.
Resilient practicesOracle’s own go-to-market approach resonates
strongly with Accenture’s framework for a resilient
future. This includes supporting interconnectedness
by investing in Oracle Fusion Middleware that
supports all the required technology for integration
within and outside the enterprise.
At the same time, Accenture’s AFPO offering
is designed to be very resilient. It takes Oracle
Fusion Middleware and Oracle Database stacks
and integrates them—clustered, in a cloud, or
in sections, according to what the client wants.
Must-ask questionsHere are the kinds of questions that should be
on the agendas of all executives who see why
resilience is so important.
• Does our top-management team have a clear
understanding of what it means to design our
systems for failure? If not, what’s needed to
create that understanding?
• What is our plan for mapping and prioritizing
security, operational, and failure-scenario
threat models to existing and planned business
operations?
• How quickly can we bring in an outside security
firm to attack our infrastructure? How readily
can we then monitor the events internally and
reconcile with logs from the security firm to see
where our defenses are deficient?
• How are we addressing risks that we know
about? And how quickly can we adapt to the risks
we don’t know about?
• What will it take to create a governance model
for auditing and testing the entire ecosystem
of IT system and process dependencies—both
internally and externally?
• Can we mitigate downtime risks by shifting
compute loads to public-cloud infrastructure—
either during peak times or at least when we are
under attack?
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
31
Accenture’s experience over several hundred
successful projects allows a client to base the entire
enterprise on a foundation that is built right the
first time.
The time to start architecting for resiliency is
right now—not when customers expect it or when
losses in trade secrets, revenues, or brand value
have reached painful levels. After the necessary
discussions about risk with the organization’s senior
executives, IT leaders must start to map out the
threat models specific to their businesses. With
this information, they can use business process
economics to identify the services most critical to
the organization’s strategic direction and thus those
most in need of resiliency.
#techv i s i on2014
32
Putting Oracle Fusion Middleware to work faster than ever Accenture’s long-time support for Oracle
implementations is helping clients become
productive much faster. One recent example: the
Accenture Foundation Platform for Oracle (AFPO)
is a development accelerator for Oracle’s Fusion
Middleware portfolio of products that can help
cut development time and costs by up to 30
percent. By tapping Accenture’s experience and
advanced tool sets, clients can worry less about
getting the implementation right and focus
more on achieving the best business outcomes.
AFPO is a prebuilt and tested reference
application that includes best-practice
documentation, day one deliverables, and
quick-start virtual-machine images, along with
access to a team of skilled resources.xi AFPO can
be delivered all at once or in stages, and it can
run on-site, hosted, or as a cloud solution. It
has already helped simplify and speed up the
installation of Oracle Fusion Middleware at more
than 120 clients worldwide.
The platform addresses common integration
gaps that Accenture has found in enterprise
implementations. AFPO’s design is based on best
practices from hundreds of Accenture client
projects over the past five years. Instead of the
client having to spend weeks or months on
architecture design and build, AFPO provides a
deployable architecture on day one. On day two,
Accenture can start customizing client needs
and delivering key business benefits sooner.
AFPO supports Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Business
Intelligence, Oracle Identity Management
Suite, Oracle Database, and other solutions—
more than 30 Oracle products in all. The latest
version adds capabilities that help clients with
new challenges presented by the proliferating
use of mobile devices—challenges such as
device management and security. This new
version—version 7—includes integration with
Oracle Mobile Application Framework, Oracle
WebCenter, Oracle Engineered Systems, and
Oracle’s Customer Experience portfolio.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
33
USPS excels at always-on tracking of parcel post The vigorous expansion of e-commerce is
accelerating demand for parcel shipping, and
the United States Postal Service (USPS) is in hot
competition for a larger share of that market.
But until recently, the service’s parcel-tracking
system had not been up to the job—a significant
disadvantage, when today’s customers place
such a high premium on tracking visibility.
To set clear standards for parcel tracking,
the postal service had committed to placing
a barcode on every package, with 11 to 16
scan events per package. With the knowledge
that its aging mainframe infrastructure could
not support these activities (the system was
outdated and expensive to maintain, and it
was receiving more data than it could process
and store) the USPS opted to invest in a new
product-tracking system that would provide
superb tracking capabilities, expand with the
business, and provide better data—faster—to its
commercial-shipping customers and consumers.
Together, Accenture and Oracle have helped the
USPS build and launch its Parcel Tracking System
2 (PTS-2) Not only was PTS-2 designed for high
performance and scalability, but also it was
developed as an always-on system. To ensure
that USPS customers never experience service
disruptions, the PTS-2 project-design team
created a physical clone of the main database in
the primary data center. The database includes
both a 15-terabyte operational data store for the
most recent 45 days of data and a 70-terabyte
data store containing two years of archived and
reporting data. By using this approach, the USPS
can make changes to PTS-2 with zero downtime.
In less than six months in 2011, the core
PTS-2 infrastructure—88 servers across five
environments—was in place. By March 2012,
inbound-data interfaces had been turned on
and significant testing had begun. PTS-2 began
to ingest data from commercial manifests,
retail parcel transactions, and parcel sorting
and delivery events. In December 2012—peak
holiday-mail season—PTS-2 went live in a
production-like environment, processing both
#techv i s i on2014
34
inbound and outbound data. At its busiest, the
system processed 150 million inbound records
and 80 million extracted records each day.
From January to April 2013, PTS-2 ran in parallel
with the legacy system so that the project team
could compare the processing and output of
both systems, fine-tune the new system, and
validate the reliability of the infrastructure and
functionality. When PTS-2 went live in April, it
had an immediate and positive impact on USPS
operations. At peak, PTS-2 took on 5 percent
more parcels and tracking events than the
legacy system had been able to support.
The successful implementation has delivered
other important benefits to the USPS.
Implementing PTS-2 allows the USPS to retire
its mainframe-based system—and get back
about $20 million in costs related to software
and hardware licenses. And customers can get
more detail about the status of their shipments
far faster than before. Despite an increase in
the number of scans per package, end-to-end
processing time has been halved: 95 percent of
Web requests are handled within 0.2 seconds,
compared with 0.5 seconds under the old
system.
At the same time, the system is highly scalable.
Previously, the USPS could scale its parcel-
tracking work only by increasing the mainframe
hardware footprint and related costs. PTS-2,
on the other hand, was built to handle the
USPS’s anticipated load, and the leading-
edge technology used in the solution was
designed with expandability in mind. Rules can
be changed on the fly to respond to shifting
demand, and new capabilities can be piloted
without compromising normal functions.
ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY V IS ION FOR ORACLE
35
Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle and/or its affiliates.
Copyright © 2014 Accenture All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.
NOTES
i http://www.accenture.com/Microsites/it-
technology-trends-2014/Pages/home.aspx.
ii http://www.accenture.com/us-en/company/
overview/awards/Pages/nyc-311-wins-un-public-
service-award-solutions.aspx.
iii http://www.accenture.com/Microsites/it-
technology-trends-2014/Pages/home.aspx.
iv Ibid.
v http://www.oracle.com/webapps/dialogue/ns/
dlgwelcome.jsp?p_ext=Y&p_dlg_id=14760732&s
rc=7878540&Act=64&sckw=WWMK13048931M
PP004.
vi http://www.accenture.com/Microsites/it-
technology-trends-2014/Pages/home.aspx.
vii http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/
number-one-database/index.html.
viii http://www.appbrain.com/stats/android-market-
app-categories.
ix http://www.accenture.com/Microsites/it-
technology-trends-2014/Pages/home.aspx.
x Ibid.
xi www.accenture.com/afpo.
ABOUT ACCENTURE
Accenture is a global management consulting,
technology services and outsourcing company,
with approximately 289,000 people serving clients
in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled
experience, comprehensive capabilities across all
industries and business functions, and extensive
research on the world’s most successful companies,
Accenture collaborates with clients to help them
become high-performance businesses and
governments. The company generated net revenues
of US$28.6 billion for the fiscal year ended
Aug. 31, 2013. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
CONTACTS
For more informationDerek Steelberg Managing Director, Oracle Practice
Patrick Sullivan Managing Director, Oracle Technology
Practice
www.accenture.com/technologyvision