Accenture and VMware announced an expanded partnership and the launch of a dedicated business group that will help organizations adopt a ‘cloud first' strategy - accelerating migration to the cloud, building modern apps more rapidly, and using the cloud as a foundation for innovation and new business models, ultimately realizing greater value.

The Accenture VMware Business Group represents a new multi-year, multi-million-dollar investment from the two companies, which have a relationship spanning more than two decades. The new business group brings together dedicated professionals with deep expertise in hybrid cloud and cloud migrations, cloud native and application modernization and security across key industries. Supported by approximately 2,000 Accenture cloud professionals trained in VMware products and services, the Accenture VMware Business Group will help clients tap into the powerful capabilities and elasticity of the cloud - which has become essential to quickly scaling business services, operating efficiently and enabling innovation at scale.

The new business group is part of Accenture Cloud First, which Accenture launched in 2020 with a $3 billion investment in new capabilities, solutions, partnerships and client engagements to help clients shape, move and operate their businesses in the cloud.

"Cloud is the single most powerful tool for mastering change," said Julie Sweet, chief executive officer, Accenture. "As organizations 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."

The Accenture VMware Business Group will invest in joint go-to-market and sales operations, training of more Accenture practitioners in VMware technologies and the development of new service offerings, assets and accelerators underpinned by VMware technologies. The two companies will also develop pre-engineered vertical industry solutions, including a platform to help telecommunications companies accelerate the rollout of 5G and edge computing services.

"To meet the demands of today's unprecedented business environment, organizations must employ a multi-cloud strategy - more rapidly than ever before," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. "Increasingly, customers are running their applications on one or more clouds, datacenters and the edge and the Accenture VMware Business Group will bring together the world-class teams and expertise required, with the speed, agility, and resilience that organizations demand, today and tomorrow."

The new business group will launch a specialized VMware Cloud Migration Factory to migrate computing workloads to the cloud rapidly, more securely and confidently, using highly automated processes that have been fine-tuned by the migration and modernization of thousands of applications. The VMware Cloud Migration Factory will give clients access to a controlled environment and dedicated resources to plan, test, migrate and modernize applications at scale to their preferred public, private and/or hybrid cloud - reducing the risk of moving VMware workloads and accelerating time-to-value.

"Embarking on our ‘journey to cloud' is part of our core strategy to successfully navigate the market, by offering an innovative brand experience and boosting e-commerce capabilities, while keeping the right flexibility and speed to respond to new challenges," said Claudio Bianchi, chief information officer, Kiko Milano. "Accenture and VMware have already made it possible for Kiko Milano to move our entire IT infrastructure to the cloud in record time. We are confident that the Accenture VMware Business Group can help us in the future to further accelerate our go-to-market capabilities."

"The pandemic brought about a new ‘next normal' for organizations, one where they need to accelerate their use of cloud to modernize the business and serve as a foundation for innovation," said Rick Villars, group vice president of worldwide research, IDC. "They recognize that public, private and hybrid cloud all play a critical role in this transition and they require technology cloud partners and service providers who are able to execute the strategies and provide the skills needed to drive this transformation faster than ever before."

As a VMware Global Principal Partner and Premier Global Systems Integrator within VMware, Accenture is one of VMware's largest global go-to-market partners, with broad and deep understanding of VMware's capabilities. VMware is a trusted partner of Accenture's global IT organization, efficiently and more securely powering compute workloads in the cloud and now leading the way on edge computing.