Julie Sweet (Accenture)
Global consulting firm Accenture has expanded its relationship with VMware to launch a joint business unit focused on cloud solutions.
The new Accenture VMware Business Group is a multi-year, multi-million dollar investment between the two companies and will see approximately 2,000 Accenture staff members trained in VMware technology offer cloud migration and app construction acceleration services.
This is the latest installment in the two-decade-long relationship between the two companies, with Accenture currently a VMware global principal partner and a premier global systems integrator within VMware.
“Cloud is the single most powerful tool for mastering change,” said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet. “As organisations accelerate their move to the cloud and edge over the next few years, the Accenture VMware Business Group will help deliver the speed, scale and security they need to fundamentally reinvent their businesses and create more value.”
Also on the books for the new group are joint go-to-market and sales operations, training of more Accenture staff in VMware technologies and developing new services that use VMware technologies.
Additionally, the pair will launch a VMware Cloud Migration Factory service, which offers automated computing workload migration services, as well as a controlled environment and dedicated resources to plan, test, migrate and modernise applications at scale to a public, private or hybrid cloud.
Accenture and VMware are also set to develop pre-engineered vertical industry solutions, one of which being a platform to speed up telecommunication companies’ rollouts of 5G and edge computing services.
The new business group is also part of the consulting firm’s Accenture Cloud First multi-service group, which launched In September 2020 with a planned three-year US$3 billion investment for new capabilities, solutions, partnerships and client engagements in relation to cloud technology.
The idea behind Accenture Cloud First was that it would supercharge the consulting firm’s ability to help its clients across all industries rapidly become ‘cloud first’ businesses and accelerate their digital transformation to realise greater value at speed and scale.
Specifically, the group integrates the company’s wide-ranging cloud expertise, including cloud migration, infrastructure and application services and ecosystem partnerships; deep industry and cross-industry insights, data and applied intelligence capabilities.
Previously, the acquisition of Melbourne-based AWS and Microsoft partner Olikka in December 2020 came as a part of Cloud First.
In addition, the Accenture VMware Business Group isn’t the first joint business group for the consulting firm, with it partnering with ServiceNow in October 2020 to launch the Accenture ServiceNow Business Group focused on digital transformation projects.
That business unit consists of 8,500 Accenture people with skills in ServiceNow, specialising in boosting customers’ workflow and platform development, marketing, sales and business development.
