Beyond the migration: Accenture and AWS expand partnership to support continuous cloud innovation

Accenture is expanding its AWS partnership by adding new services to help customers implement cloud solutions more quickly. The idea is to build industry-specific accelerators to speed up deployments and to help companies train their workforce to better understand cloud capabilities.

Accenture’s Cloud First business unit was the biggest driver of the company’s overall cloud business growth from $12 billion to $18 billion, according to the company.

Matt Garman, senior vice president of sales and marketing at AWS, said in a press release that the reusable accelerators are designed to make cloud transformation easier and more predictable.

 “We’ve learned through experience that customer success often hinges on two key factors: speed and the ability to adopt new ways of working,” he said. 

Over the next five years, Accenture will develop a range of new accelerators to address the biggest challenges in cloud migrations with a goal of enabling AWS innovations to be adopted up to 50% faster.  The Accenture AWS Business Group has 20,000 cloud specialists and the group has worked with AWS to build 40 solutions for 16 industries.

Andy Tay, global lead for the Accenture AWS Business Group, said the partnership makes cloud first an easier choice. 

“What we shaped with AWS is a vision for the next five years to help clients address the scale and complexity of cloud projects,” he said.

These “pre-built cloud services” will make it easier for companies to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to address industry-specific challenges, such as force management for public safety organizations. 

Tay said that Accenture clients can use these accelerators to implement AWS cloud services 50% faster. 

The new investment has three goals:

1. Building new industry-specific accelerators for cloud projects 
2. Extending the business value of cloud projects beyond the initial migration
3. Supporting the human talent and change dimensions of cloud deployments at scale

According to a recent Accenture survey of 1,100 IT leaders working on cloud deployments, leaders who transform their people as well as tech infrastructure reported 60% higher ROI on cloud investments than those who focused on tech alone.

As part of this investment, Accenture also will continue to invest in data-driven solutions for talent development and organizational change.

“Having the right talent is in our mind the key determinant to getting the best value you can from the cloud,” Tay said.

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These tools also will support continuous innovation and allow companies to reimagine the role of data, according to Tay.

This “intentional innovation” spans three areas:

1. Connecting capabilities from AWS with services from partners such as Salesforce to create new products and services
2. Learning how to better use AWS and cloud native services to increase efficiency and reduce costs
3. Using cloud services to build predictive models to respond to trends more quickly 

Tay predicts that the pace of innovation will continue at a rapid pace over the next five years as long as companies can keep the workforce up to speed.

“What matters now is really at the client site: harnessing those resources requires a commitment to continuous innovation and that comes down to people,” he said.

The Accenture AWS Business Group launched in 2015 and today’s news represents a five-year extension. Tay said that the Accenture/AWS partnership has succeeded because of a shared focus on customer needs and the ability to collaborate. 

“We’ve honed the ability to get our athletes running around the track together and a common bond to innovate drives trust,” he said. “There’s also an unwavering desire by both teams to innovate and to see the opportunity even if it is disruptive to your existing business.” 

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