Accenture Technology Vision 2012: Emerging Technology Trends for IT Leaders

High performing business leaders now accept that their organizations’ future success is tied to their ability to keep pace with technology. Today’s CIOs have a key role to play in helping these business leaders recognize and seize the opportunities enabled by new trends—but the price of progress will have to be paid, along with new risks assumed.

The annual Accenture Technology Vision offers CIOs unique insight on six emerging technology trends that will have the greatest impact —and their business implications for the C-suite. Read the Accenture Technology Vision 2012 for a view of what conversations will be most important over the next three to five years.

	Download the full Accenture Technology Vision 2012 report. [PDF, 3.56MB]
	Download the Accenture Technology Vision 2012 Executive Summary. [PDF, 492KB]
	Now available: Accenture Technology Vision 2012 in Mandarin 埃森哲2012年 技术展望 [PDF, 3.4MB]

	View more: Accenture Technology Vision 2013: The Latest IT Trends and Innovations
	View the press release: Accenture Technology Vision 2012 Identifies Context-Based Services as an Emerging Technology Trend That Can Help IT Leaders Increase Revenue for Their Businesses
	View the Accenture Technology Vision 2011.

Accenture publishes its technology vision annually. It is a distillation of our extensive research over the course of the previous 12 months, the experiences of our research teams and the input of our own industry experts and clients. In it, we outline the emerging technology trends that forward-thinking CIOs will use to position their organizations to drive growth and high performance, rather than just focusing on cost-cutting and efficiency improvements.

Accenture has identified six technology trends that will influence business over the next three to five years:

• Context-based services. Where you are and what you are doing will drive the next wave of digital services.
  
  
• Converging data architectures. Successfully rebalancing the data architecture portfolio and blending the structured with the unstructured are key to turning data into new streams of value.
  
  
• Industrialized data services. The ability to share data will make it more valuable—but only if it is managed differently.
  
  
• Social-driven IT. Realize that social is not just a bolt-on marketing channel. It will have true business-wide impact.
  
  
• PaaS-enabled agility. The maturing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market will shift the emphasis from cost-cutting to business innovation, supporting rapid evolution for business processes that need continuous change.
  
  
• Orchestrated analytical security. Organizations will have to accept that their gates will be breached and begin preparing their second line of defense—data platforms—to mitigate the damage caused by attacks that get through.

Building on the Accenture Technology Vision 2012, we've developed the Business Implications series below to help discussions around the innovations in IT move beyond the CIO organization.

	Data Culture In this first paper in the series, Accenture Technology Labs looks at the significance of emerging data culture.
	Privacy Economy In this second paper in the series, read about the business implications of the growing value of data (the data economy) versus the growing emphasis on data privacy.
	Social Commerce In this third paper, read how six technology trends will influence business over the next three to five years as it seeks to come to terms with the new reality of social commerce.