Accenture

Inovent’s Ilumina Launches With Nationalistic Marketing — Over in the Philippines, a tech-startup named Inovent recently unveiled a prototype of the Ilumina, an “LCD interactive TV” that promises web browsing, video and music playback, and recording capability. Here’s some background: from a tech point-of-view, the Philippines is known more for its very active mobile market and outsourced services. Companies like Texas Instruments and Accenture rely on the country to produce gadgets and provide customer support on the cheap. In short, there is no home-grown base for consumer electronics, which is why foreign brands like Nokia and Samsung dominate the market. This is obvious for a company... [Tags: accenture, andres bonifacio, filipinos, global economy, ilumina]

Poll: Millennials tend to ignore IT policies — An Accenture survey found that many working members of the millennial generation -- those age 14 to 27 -- either ignore or are unaware of IT policies about posting company or customer data online.... [Tags: accenture, customer data, millennial generation, millennials, poll]

Keynote: The Future of Technology in Aged Care — Last week I gave a keynote speech on The Future of Technology in Aged Care at the Aged Care Association Annual Congress. In this case I wanted to take the audience on a big-picture journey into where aged care is going, which went down very well between the many high-detail presentations at the conference. I was invited as a general futurist, though I have in fact written and being interviewed on the topic of aged care frequently before, particularly on the role of robots in aged care, including in a feature article in Newsday. Below is a brief snapshot of... [Tags: accenture, aging population, alzheimers, best doctors, care institutions]

A former co-worker of mine was a recent university graduate who transferred to another division of my company. During the time that I worked with her, I valued her contributions and spoke of her with the highest regard. Obviously I was misguided, if this Dark Reading post is accurate. She was a threat to me and all that my company stood for.During the past two weeks, IT security managers have been getting a new warning that turns the old '60s hippie slogan -- "Never trust anyone over 30" -- upside down. The new message: Twenty-somethings are putting the corporate network... [Tags: accenture, berland, co worker, data leakage, generation y]

According to a new report by Accenture, a large number of Millennials (those born between 1977 and 1997), expect their companies to accommodate their IT preferences, including their preferred computers and applications. More than a third of Millennials also indicated that they were dissatisfied with the technologies their employers currently provide. Among other things, Millennials would prefer to use instant messaging, text messaging, and RSS feeds to communicate with their clients and customers, though very few companies currently support these technologies. The report also highlights that a lot of employees are simply bypassing corporate IT departments if those don't offer... [Tags: accenture, email, instant messaging services, millennials, mobile phones]

Many working millennials are unaware of or ignoring corporate IT rules — An Accenture survey of 400 members of the millennial generation found that IT managers may have to start supporting a slew of emerging technologies to ensure that the best new employees stick around.... [Tags: accenture, emerging technologies, millennial generation, millennials, slew]

Recession-Hit Indian Firms Experiment with New Innovation Strategies — The big Indian IT vendors - Infosys, Satyam, TCS, Wipro - are beginning to feel the pinch of the global economic slowdown, as US and European companies, especially in the financial sector, slash down their tech spending. The medium-term prospects are gloomier: Forrester just revised its US IT spending projection for 2009 to 6%, down from its previous forecast of 9.4%. Not surprisingly, Indian IT vendors are multiplying initiatives to cope with this downturn. Firms like Wipro have set up dedicated business units to penetrate emerging Indian and Middle Eastern markets. Others like Infosys are attempting to lessen their exposure... [Tags: accenture, business innovation, business units, capgemini, collaborative innovation]

Geraldine Wilson, CEO of Truphone - interview today — We’re interviewing Geraldine Wilson, the newly appointed Chief Executive of Truphone, this afternoon. Our fearless former Accenture Demon, Ed Hodges (of Howler Tech), is readying a list of questions to put to her on camera, later today. If you’d like to ask her a question, either email it to me directly — ewan@mobileindustryreview.com or post a comment below…... [Tags: accenture, ceo, chief executive, demon, geraldine wilson]

Enterprise software's Blue Light Special: Now 70 percent off — Are you the sucker still paying full price for Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, or other proprietary software? There's hope for you yet: Accenture is finding that such enterprise software vendors are increasingly giving as much as 70 percent off their list pricing to snag new customers, as CIO.com reports. ...... [Tags: accenture, enterprise software vendors, microsoft, oracle, proprietary software]

Report: Worrisome trends in software pricing — A report out from Accenture today calls attention to several worrisome trends in software pricing.... [Tags: accenture, worrisome trends]

Patenting Tax Strategies Under Bilski — Except for the few patent holders and Accenture, the tax strategy business community has been largely anti-patent – going so far as to lobby congress to introduce legislation to create a specific exception that would block enforcement of those patents. In Bilski, the Federal Circuit refused to categorically exclude any particular fields of business or technology from the scope of patent protection. The court specifically mentioned software and business methods as still patentable. Presumably, tax strategies are still patentable as well. The closest the court came to creating an exclusion is for purely 'mental' processes – where each step of... [Tags: abstractions, accenture, bilski, business community, business methods]

US Court Strikes Down "Business Method" Patents (Like Amazon's 1-Click) For Now (AMZN) — The sparks are going to fly: The legal status of Amazon's (AMZN) controversial 1-click patent, which the company filed for in 1997 and won in 1999 -- and licensed to companies like Apple (AAPL) -- is now in doubt. Reuters: A U.S. patent appeals court ruled on Thursday that business methods, such as Amazon.com Inc's one-click to buy goods on the Internet, cannot be patented. The case was closely watched by software makers, Internet companies, investment houses and other businesses.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said the patent application in question -- a method for reducing the... [Tags: aapl, accenture, amazon com inc, american express, appeals court]

I’m pleased to let you know that this year’s Groundswell awards were presented yesterday by Josh Bernoff at our conference in Dallas. I was one of the final judges, although Josh and Zach Hofer-Shall were instrumental in sorting through over 150 submissions. Congrats to: Winners by the POST Methdology 5 objectives: – Listening: Mattel’s “The Playground” Community by Communispace – Talking: Young & Free Alberta by Common Wealth Credit Union – Energizing: Hershey’s Bliss House Party by House Party – Supporting: Nerd Network by National Instruments – Embracing: MyStarbucksIdea.com by Starbucks Other key categories include: – Managing: Borderless Workplace by... [Tags: accenture, amp, bliss, brooklyn, brooklyn museum]

Zuora Raises Another $15 Million For Integrated Online Billing And Payment Solution — Zuora, an SaaS startup that offers online services to manage and automate customer subscriptions and payments, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding from Shasta Ventures and Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Venturebeat reports. The company had previously raised $6.5 million from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Benchmark Capital (who also participated in this round), bringing the total of funding to $21.5 million. When Zuora launched its online billing solution last May, we wrote the company aims to alleviate the need for online businesses to develop their own billing systems, especially to handle recurring payments like those associated... [Tags: accenture, benchmark capital, billing operations, billing platform, billing solution]

With Fewer Staff Will Companies Respond by Blocking Access to Social Media in the Workplace — Dealing with the YouthForce The Millenials and Gen Ys are an increasingly important segment of our workforce. This demographic has had the luxury of a prosperous economy during their teenage years and adult life. They haven’t experienced an economic downturn or heaven forbid - an R! Accenture coined the term user-determined computing. The relates to the increasingly tech savvy workforce and the dramatic increase in the availability of free, customisable and easy to implement software. The Accenture argument goes that new technology within the workforce is just as likely to be deployed by users as it is by the IT department,... [Tags: accenture, adult life, channel 7, company communications, dramatic increase]

DMI08: Digital Media Here, Monetization Not — What an interesting conference. The takeaway is that the infrastructure is here for both digital and mobile digital media, but the monetization models are not and the content owners are growing desperate. We are at the disruptive stage, where newspapers and TV stations are laying off and only SOME players have figured out how to make money from the new way younger people want to consume content. I've got a lot of facts and figures here that corroborate the intuition we all have as early adopters (aka people with iPhones). Has it Happened Yet? According to Richard Cottrell, the CEO... [Tags: 9b, accenture, content distribution, content matters, content owners]

Improving Search Results for Research-Online-Purchase-Offline Customers — What if 68% of your site visitors only came to research an offline purchase? According to research by Accenture: 68% compare prices online before shopping in a physical store 58% locate items online before purchasing offline 67% prefer to research online and buy from physical stores Just for fun, let’s call web shoppers with a high propensity to research online and purchase offline “ROPO” customers (a noun and a verb). Reasons to ROPO include: Shopper wants to view the item up close Shopper needs the item sooner than it can ship Shopper wants to avoid shipping fees Shopper might not... [Tags: accenture, aisles, bulls eye, christmas, customer service]

'Free lunch' and open-source support — Sometimes "free" is not so free. I recently discovered this when a large, global system integrator (SI) deployed Alfresco Labs, our free and unsupported product, for a large client in Europe. The SI wasn't a partner of ours, and as the client soon learned when its deployment stumbled, the SI wasn't capable of providing enterprise-class support on the product. Yes, it knew the product well enough to deploy it and get paid over $50 million for its trouble, but when the deployment hit a glitch, guess to whom the SI came crawling for help? It's not just my company. I... [Tags: 50 million, accenture, booz allen hamilton, embarrassment, enterprise class]

Consumers Like Using Cell Phones…To Make Calls — So here is some news for anyone betting the ranch that the entire population of the planet will be walking around with multi-function smartphones, capable of doing far more than making phone calls: Most people aren’t using all of that stuff. A new survey from Accenture (ACN) found that 88% of U.S. consumers never use their phones or other mobile devices to watch video. Some 84% of those surveyed never use their phones for email. And 79% never use the phones for playing games. The Accenture survey, which it calls “Digital Lifestyle 3.0,” also found that 63% of 5,000 U.S.... [Tags: accenture, acn, baby boomers, digital lifestyle, email]

Thanks to our GigaNET Sponsors — We’d like to say thanks to this month’s GigaNET sponsors: Accenture: “The Innovation Dilemma: How to Achieve High Performance through Superior Research & Development” (free download) Volo Media: Dynamic advertising for downloadable audio and video Peer1: ValuePro Managed Hosting Plan, $299/mo Ki Work: Take control of your online business Brain Keeper: Collaboration that works Rackspace Hosting: Experience fanatical support Acquia: Commercially supported Drupal Sun Microsystems: Incredible discounts with Sun Startup Essentials... [Tags: accenture, amp, brain, collaboration, dilemma]