Microsoft and Accenture have teamed up on enterprise hybrid cloud. The two companies have a longstanding relationship and have now introduced Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Azure.
The companies teamed up on an end-to-end public cloud solution in 2012. The two launched a joint venture called Avanade in 2000, which is a big Microsoft solutions provider with more than $2 billion in global sales. The latest hybrid cloud agreement is the most far-reaching collaboration since Avanade, according to the companies.
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.
Accenture has other high-profile partnerships, such as the recently announced SAP HANA on HP collaboration and a partnership with Huawei on private cloud.
This is the latest bid to help enterprises “transform” infrastructure toward cloud. Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure includes new technologies to migrate and manage applications between private and public clouds in a controlled, seamless, and automated way, the companies said. The “everything-as-a-service” offering is made up of:
- Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform connected with Windows Server with Hyper-V, System Center and Azure Pack running in customer data centers. The connection is what enables hybrid infrastructure
- Accenture Cloud Platform, which provides enterprises with self service application provisioning and supports multi-platform environments. Its central dashboard controls cloud brokerage and management capabilities and provides an enterprise-grade environment including governance, security.
- Professional services from Accenture, who will consult on strategy and transformation, as well as migration and managed services.
- Avanade’s Microsoft solutions experts
An early customer is Freeport-McMoRan, one of the largest international natural resource companies. The hybrid cloud offering was used to protype a new Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform to improve mining operations. Data from trucks, drills, and other assets in the mine is securely harvested to show supervisors what’s going on in real or near-to-real time.
“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,” said Accenture chairman and CEO Pierre Nanterme in a release. “This unique collaboration with Microsoft and Avanade is one of Accenture’s most strategic and important initiatives for driving enterprise-wide cloud adoption.”
