Accenture taps Australia for next SAP demo center
It's always interesting to see a company put its money where its mouth is.
Global consulting firm Accenture announced this morning that it was opening a new "innovation center" -- read: showroom and client demonstration shop -- in Melbourne, Australia. It will share the floor with Telstra, the telecommunications company, and show off SAP's wares (business analytics, mobility) to enterprise and government customers.
It's hardly Accenture's first such shop, but that's why it's interesting.
Here's the complete list of Accenture's SAP-promoting shops around the world:
- San Jose, Calif.
- Chicago, Ill.
- New York, N.Y.
- Toronto, Canada
- Sophia Antipolis, France (approx. 30 mins. from Nice)
- Bangalore, India
- Tokyo, Japan
- Beijing, China
- Singapore
- Melbourne, Australia
If you want to know which areas of the world are in the market for IT services, there you have it. (Accenture has even more of these centers, but the above list is specifically for SAP partner shops.)
The kinds of customers targeted by these centers include utilities as well as those in the retail, financial services, oil and gas and healthcare sectors. (For example, Accenture's center in Beijing is geared toward addressing China's energy consumption.)
As Australia's second-largest city, Melbourne has particular strength in finance, manufacturing, research, IT, education, logistics and tourism -- two of Australia's biggest banks are headquartered there, it's Australia's automotive center it also happens to be the country's largest seaport.
In other words, this is where global supply chains come to play.
The keyword here is education. One SAP executive wrote in 2010 that he saw a "steep learning curve" when introducing various concepts in Bangalore; the goal of these ventures is to smooth the path a bit more.