Accenture CTO: We're Going To Be The Largest Enterprise Cloud Company

Accenture has its sights set on becoming the "largest enterprise cloud company," CTO Paul Daugherty said, as it plans to capitalize on growing confusion in the market for businesses migrating to digital platforms.

Accenture has bet big on digital platforms in recent years, rolling out the Accenture Cloud Platform and other technologies to help clients capitalize on the idea that "every business is a digital business," Daugherty said at the IDE Platform Strategy Summit held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Friday.

"We're at the early stages of the digital revolution," Daugherty said. "We believe that pace of disruption is going to increase."

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[Video: Watch Accenture's CTO describe how the company can become the largest enterprise cloud provider without any data centers or servers.]

It's this move to the digital space that is redefining the way many companies do business. Companies such as John Deere are essentially becoming technology companies, he said, as they move away from traditional tractor sales to selling "tractor-as-a-platform," a full solution that includes valuable analytics on soil quality, meteorological information, satellite information and more.

"That’s a better business model and a more differentiated way to go to market then selling a green tractor," Daugherty said.

By reinventing product lines as a platform, companies expand beyond just offering products to selling the potential outcome sourced from their solutions.

"To deliver better outcomes for people, you need partners, you need an ecosystem and to provide a connected outcome to a customer you need a platform to do that. That's why we believe platforms are at the crux of how companies will do business in a digital world," Daugherty said.

That type of platform-based approach is what Accenture predicts is the future of business. For systems integrators such as Accenture, Daugherty said he sees a big opportunity to help customers navigate the transformation and offer an integrated platform solution like the Accenture Cloud Platform. That is a "fast-growing" part of the Accenture business, he said.

Like Uber, Facebook and others, Daugherty said that Accenture doesn't want to own inventory. It is doing away with the data center and infrastructure and instead has built a platform that offers an integrated cloud solution that helps customers embrace the platform future.

"Like Airbnb, we own no rooms. We own no servers, but we are providing something tremendous," Daugherty said.

However, there are some questions that businesses will need to answer as they evolve. First, he said companies need to decide if they want to compete to be the leader or partner with other companies in their industry. That will help businesses decide if they want to invest in their own platform or leverage existing technology, Daugherty said.

Daugherty also said companies also have to address questions about the data involved, whether it will be private or shared and whether the platform will be open or proprietary. Finally, Daugherty said companies have to think about whether the solution will be a service or an outcome.

"That’s why it’s a time when thinking about things like new business models, thinking about things like platforms and providing more clarity to business is very important. That’s what we're focused on providing to our clients," Daugherty said. "Platforms are at the heart of our digital vision and how we believe companies need to respond to the digital revolution."

PUBLISHED JULY 10, 2015