Accenture made its debut today on the S&P 500, an achievement that is testament to the recent wave of technology innovations in the enterprise.

Accenture has fared well recently. In June, the Irish company posted a 28% increase in revenues for the quarter. Management said a driver for Accenture’s growth is the enterprise demand for using cloud and mobile technologies.

The S&P 500 is a leading indicator of the economy. According to Wikipedia:

The S&P 500 is an index of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. The stocks included in the S&P 500 are those of large publicly held companies that trade on either of the two largest American stock market exchanges: the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ.

After the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 is the most widely followed index of large-cap American stocks. It is considered a bellwether for the American economy, and is included in the Index of Leading Indicators.

Accenture’s acceptance to the S&P 500 is an example of the mega trends enveloping the services business. Accenture recently published a report detailing its technology vision that shows how the company views th shifting technology landscape.  It touches on familiar themes:

• Data takes its rightful place as a platform.
• Analytics is driving a discontinuous evolution from business intelligence.
• Cloud computing will create more value higher up the stack.
• Architecture will shift from server-centric to service-centric.
• IT security will respond rapidly, progressively—and in proportion.
• Data privacy will adopt a risk-based approach.
• Social platforms will emerge as a new source of business intelligence.
• User experience is what matters.

Services Angle

Accenture’s debut on the S&P 500 is symbolic of the massive economic engine that cloud computing and more generally, data, is bringing to markets around the world. That’s a trend the services world can prosper from readily as innovation moves from the server to a services centric economy.