Accenture and Microsoft launch hybrid cloud platform

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Accenture and Microsoft Corp. have expanded their long-standing strategic alliance with the introduction of the Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure, a powerful hybrid cloud platform designed to bring new capabilities, economics and innovation to the enterprise. Working with Avanade, the companies are co-funding and co-engineering this platform with new hybrid cloud technologies and services to help enterprises build and manage enterprise-wide cloud infrastructure and applications.

Pierre Nanterme, chairman and CEO, Accenture said,"With new demands being placed on IT departments every day, enterprises need to smartly connect their infrastructure, software applications, data and operations capabilities in order to become agile, intelligent, digital businesses. This unique collaboration with Microsoft and Avanade is one of Accenture’s most strategic and important initiatives for driving enterprise-wide cloud adoption.”

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft said, “The Microsoft cloud, combined with Accenture’s industry knowledge and implementation expertise, accelerates our customers’ cloud adoption and unlocks new benefits, including powerful new applications, data-driven insights and increased productivity.”

This agreement is the most far-reaching collaboration between Accenture and Microsoft since the 2000 joint venture to launch Avanade, a leading Microsoft solution provider with more than 22,000 employees and US $2 billion in global sales.

The Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure delivers new technologies to migrate and manage applications between private and public clouds in a controlled, seamless and automated way – on demand, at speed and from a single console. The solution integrates and builds on key capabilities from the three companies to help enterprises deliver “everything as a service”.

The solution is already being piloted at Freeport-McMoRan, an international natural resource company, to prototype a new Industrial Internet of Things platform to improve mining operations. The platform will enable operations supervisors to analyze and react to near real-time situations in the mine, allowing them to take immediate action on items that impact mine production, which ultimately drives revenue.