For those companies with pockets of innovation success, the challenge is to scale constant, iterative innovation throughout their organization. To do so, companies must rethink their entire information technology systems, but what does this system of the future look like?

“It naturally is about breaking down barriers — between systems, between businesses, in between humans and machines,” said Chris Scott (pictured, right), managing director, Accenture AWS Business Group, at Accenture LLP. “Successful companies that do this can really quickly respond to the market, because their systems are really agile and can react.”

Accenture has laid out its vision of this open, agile IT in a report called “Future Systems.”  It provides companies a compass for how to close the “innovation achievement gap,” according to Adam Burden (pictured, left), global lead of advanced technology and architecture at Accenture. It explains how “boundariless, adaptable and radically human” systems can spread innovation across an enterprise.

Scott and Burden spoke with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Executive Summit in Las Vegas. They discussed the design of the IT system of the future. (* Disclosure below.)

With AI and data, machines do it for themselves

The “radically human” features of the system includes technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision.

“These systems listen, they see, they can adapt, they understand what’s going on just like people do,” Scott said, citing Amazon Connect as an example of a system embodying “radically human” features. Amazon Connect’s scalable contact center solution caters to employees across all skill levels, providing access to graphics, contact flows and performance metrics with the power of machine intelligence and automation (Accenture is a licensed Amazon Connect partner).

Adaptable technologies leverage data and artificial intelligence to adapt to changes without the aid of humans. “They anticipate, for example, new loads or performance expectations, or they anticipate certain changes in user patterns or behavior and actually reorganize themselves without you telling them to do it,” Burden said.

Accenture is currently working with Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. on revamping its loyalty program. It’s embracing “boundariless” scaling with blockchain technology and cloud computing.

“Whether they have 10 partners, a thousand partners, or 10,000 partners in there, the way that they’ve constructed their system is it is going to elastically scale,” Burden said. “It’s going to make it faster and better with higher quality than ever before for them to onboard new partners and, even more importantly, serve their mile point program customers better.”

Also, design-thinking is producing systems that allow humans to interact seamlessly with machines via AI and voice interfaces, etc., according to Burden.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Executive Summit. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Executive Summit event. Neither Accenture LLP, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE