Accenture cloud tool aims to shorten decision cycle
Consulting firm Accenture has launched a cloud tool that industry watchers find interesting for its simulation capabilities and potential to speed up adoption.
Accenture has rolled out a tool that the company said will help customers navigate complex cloud computing options and let them simulate deployments before committing to an architecture.
The IT services firm will offer the tool, called myNav, as part of a larger consulting agreement with its customers. The myNav process starts with a discovery phase, which scans the customer's existing infrastructure and recommends a cloud deployment approach, whether private, public, hybrid or multi-cloud. Accenture's AI engine then churns through the company's repository of previous cloud projects to recommend a specific enterprise architecture and cloud offering. Next, the Accenture cloud tool simulates the recommended design, allowing the client to determine its suitability.
"There's an over-abundance of choice when the client chooses to … take applications, data and infrastructure into the cloud," said Kishore Durg, Accenture's cloud lead and growth and strategy lead for technology services. "The choices cause them to ponder, 'What is the right choice?' This [tool] will help increase their confidence in going to the cloud."
Accenture isn't unique among consultancies in marketing services to aid customers' cloud adoption. But industry watchers pointed to myNav's simulation feature as a point of differentiation.
There are many companies that offer cloud service discovery, assessment and design services for a fee, said Stephen Elliot, an analyst with IDC. "But I don't know of any other firm that will run a simulation," he added.
Yugal Joshi, a vice president with Everest Group, cited myNav's cloud architecture simulator as an intriguing feature. "Going forward, I expect it to further cover custom bespoke applications in addition to COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] platforms," he said.
Joshi, who leads Everest Group's digital, cloud and application services research practices, said most mature IT service providers have developed some type of platform to ease clients' journey to the cloud. "The difference lies in the vision behind the IP, the quality of the IP, articulation and the business value it can provide to clients," he noted.
Accenture cloud simulation's potential benefits
Elliot said myNav's simulation is interesting because it could help customers understand the outcome of a project in advance and whether that outcome will meet their expectations.
Despite cloud being around for quite some time now, it is still not a done deal.
Yugal Joshivice president, Everest Group
This could help Accenture close deals faster while fostering more productive conversations with IT buyers, Elliot said. "In any case, customers will have to trust that the underlying information and models are correct, and that the outcomes in the solution can be trusted," he said.
Customers, meanwhile, could benefit from faster cloud rollouts.
"Where Accenture myNav is focusing is leveraging the expertise Accenture has gathered over many cloud engagements," Joshi said. "This can potentially shorten the decision-making, business-casing and the eventual cloud migration for clients."
Customers can get to the results faster, rather than spend weeks or, potentially, months in assessment and roadmap exercises, he said. Whether the Accenture cloud platform delivers the anticipated results, however, will only become evident when successful client adoption case studies are available, he cautioned.
Durg said cloud assessments can take eight to 12 weeks, depending on the scale of the project. The migration phase could span two months and require 80 or more people. The simulation aspect of myNav, he noted, lets clients visualize the deployment "before a single person is put on a project."
Help wanted
Accenture's myNav tool arrives at a time when the cloud matured -- the public cloud is more than a decade old -- but not completely. The multiplicity of cloud technologies introduces uncertainty and sparks enterprise conversations around skill sets and adoption approaches.
"Despite cloud being around for quite some time now, it is still not a done deal," Joshi said. "Clients need lot of hand-holding and comfort before they can migrate to, and then leverage, cloud as an operating platform [rather] than an alternative hosting model."
Elliot added, "The market is at a point where every cloud deployment is almost a snowflake. It's the organizational, skills and process discussions that slow projects down."
