“The cloud is the biggest technological revolution of the past century”

“Cloud technology is the biggest revolution to take place during the past century. We’re not talking about the ability to put together an entire computing system that serves organizations, but rather as a concept that completely changes the rules of the games and makes organizations faster, more efficient, and helps them respond quicker,” Accenture Labs CEO Shimon Elkabetz said during a panel about digital transformations during Israel Innovation Week at a conference which was sponsored by Calcalist.

“In the past if we designed a microchip, it would take between a year and a half to two years until it’d be released - the pace of today's technology is much faster and within three to six months you must adapt yourself to the new changes that are happening all over the world. The cloud is a catalyst for this process,” Elkabetz said.

Elkabetz added that many technologies are defined as “innovative” — such as cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and robotics — have existed for several years but have only recently matured. He thinks that many organizations in the industry haven’t really made use of these technologies until now, but rather regarded them as tests or side pilots, in order to assess whether they indeed contain solutions that could assist them. However, he noted that the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic has accelerated this process, and today many large organizations realize that they must adapt their business strategy and incorporate these innovations into their core systems. “What we do as a company is take all of these technologies and capabilities and incorporate them into the industry,” Elkabetz said.

Accenture is a global company that focuses on providing technological consulting to large organizations in the industry, including adapting their operating systems. In 2020, the company registered over $46 billion in sales. It employs over 500,000 people worldwide and is traded on the Nasdaq in New York. Accenture-Israel operates a branch that has been active for three years now and has an R&D center that focuses on developing those innovative technologies in the field of cyber, which are later incorporated into Accenture’s customers systems worldwide.

According to Elkabetz, the pandemic doubled the company’s activity in Israel and he estimates that doble-figure growth will continue in the coming years - in R&D, cyber, and also through its services where it provides strategic consulting services to corporations in the industry.

High tech and the service industry

When it comes to adapting innovative and digital transformations in Israel, it can be divided into two, the tech sector and the services sector says Elkabtez. “The startup industry creates innovation and we see amazing things in that aspect. However, in the service sector - in which we, as citizens receive services - until a year ago, after the pandemic broke out, the industry was curious, but only adapted those innovations three to five years after the rest of the world did.”

“The coronavirus has given a big push to those organizations who now understand that they must make changes to the core of their businesses - whether it be in integrating new technologies or on a personnel level, because adapting innovation means investing in training human capital.”

As for the question of whether the pandemic has affected Accenture, Elkabetz said: “Since we are a company that employs 500,000 people around the world, we are used to working remotely — something that has become popular today. We were already prepared, because our capabilities were already in place — we have the proper tools and it helped us assist our customers and helped them work remotely as well. Most companies weren't prepared for the pandemic and were used to working in offices, and weren’t allowed to work from home. Once the pandemic broke out those organizations were in shock and were caught unprepared - and that’s where we entered the picture.”