Perficient, Inc., a leading digital transformation consulting firm serving Global 2000 and other large enterprise customers throughout North America, today announced the expansion of its collaboration with Pivotal Software, Inc. by making significant investments in its Pivotal Cloud Foundry practice. By bolstering its expertise and offerings in cloud-native application development, Perficient will better support enterprises' needs for accelerating their software development capabilities, allowing them to innovate at startup speed.

"Today's consumers are more tech-savvy than ever before, and are driving the need for companies to digitally transform their entire organization. Yet, these same organizations face legacy environments and can struggle to keep pace with customer demands," said Vishal Rajpal, general manager of Perficient's cloud platform solutions group. "Pivotal has emerged as a market leader in cloud-native application development, providing innovative technology solutions such as Pivotal Cloud Foundry to help enterprises migrate legacy applications to the cloud and accelerate cloud-native application development. We're pleased to grow our expertise in cloud-native development and application modernization in 2018 and beyond. As a key strategic partner, we're building next-generation innovations for our clients."

Recognizing the potential cloud-native application platforms have to be transformative, Perficient recently began sending its developers to the Pivotal Platform Acceleration Lab (PAL). The first group of Perficient cloud-native developers and architects graduated from the PAL in March 2018, having received training on Pivotal's software development methodology and platform. This includes training in Pivotal Cloud Foundry, microservices architectures, and continuous integration and delivery practices. Through PAL and the scalable "Train-the-Trainer" approach described below, Perficient plans to enable more than 300 developers on cloud-native essentials in 2018.

"Through our growing PCF practice, we are arming our developers with a modern cloud-native platform and skillset needed to develop software that is sustainable, scalable, and secure. Doing so helps companies enhance productivity, reduce costs, and accelerate collaboration and innovation," said Hari Madamalla, vice president, emerging solutions, Perficient. "We're already seeing a number of clients across all industries experience the impact of the speed, automation and operational excellence Pivotal brings."

"The Pivotal and Perficient vision is to help Fortune 2000 enterprises move at startup speed to respond to customer expectations and bring new ideas to market faster, which requires a cloud-native platform and methodology. As Perficient continues to lead more and more clients on their digital transformation journeys, there is growing customer demand to bring Perficient's trusted services expertise with our PCF platform to the market," said Nick Cayou, vice president, Global Ecosystem, Pivotal. "The PAL will ensure Perficient remains on the cutting-edge of cloud-native tools and methods, as well as help customers continuously improve software applications, freeing them to focus on higher-value aspects of their businesses while dramatically increasing developer productivity and operational efficiencies."

The PAL program utilizes a "Train-the-Trainer" approach to accelerate Perficient's developers to become cloud-native experts; hence, rapidly expanding Perficient's Pivotal Cloud Foundry practice to meet increased customer demand. The practice will be a dedicated organization where Perficient's newly minted cloud-native developers and architects will help large enterprises rapidly migrate their businesses onto PCF and prototype innovative products and services. Moreover, Perficient's cloud-native experts will provide a tailored approach to meeting its clients' business objectives such as development of DevOps strategies, development of a Cloud and DevOps Center of Excellence, migration services, and on-site developers and consultants.