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Can you hide from Accenture?

Michael Kanellos CNET News.com

Published: 15 Aug 2005 14:25 BST

Accenture is watching you.

Somehow, that statement just doesn't ring with ominous, Big Brother overtones. The consulting firm, however, is placing a big bet on remote devices and sensors that will gather information on the location, status and temperature of millions of objects in the world, or of their surrounding environments. Though some say these systems could corrode individual freedom, others believe they'll give people and businesses important information they can't get now. Accenture doesn't make the sensors; instead, it prowls the labs of other companies and tries to come up with ways to weld disparate technologies into a cohesive whole.

Accenture's Chief Scientist, Glover Ferguson, is in some ways the head prowler. For the past few decades, he's worked at the company trying to figure out what's next. Ferguson sat down with ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com to discuss RFID, the general state of privacy and what your car radio is saying about you.

Q: Give us a quick run down on Accenture's lab.
A: It first got started when Accenture was still part of Arthur Andersen & Co. We were about to get into the software business in a big way, and the argument was that we can't be in the software business and not have a lab. It's just illogical. So, the first site was in Chicago. Why in God's name would you put a research lab in Chicago? We actually had a headquarters there, and the thought was that if we put the researchers anywhere else, it could be too easy to forget that they existed.

It was the first organisation to break the dress code. They said you can't have researchers in suits, because no one will believe they're actually researching anything.

What sort of projects do you tackle?
One of our charters is to construct a five-year moving vision as to what we think is going to take hold, with the goal to create a working prototype.

In 1997, we started looking at some early RFID chips. RFID is actually a WWII era invention for identifying friendly aircraft. So, they did commercialise it, but on very, very high-end assets. We asked if you could drive it down to revolutionise supply chain. The answer was yes, but it would have to wait on standards. When EPC global got started, that started to shape up.

Anyway, the first prototypes tend...

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