Microsoft and integration firm Accenture have collaborated in order to come up with a package that will help organizations achieve more organized cloud assets. The new package is designed specifically to enhance the integration of in-house IT operations with the cloud services of Microsoft Azure.
The agreement between the two companies is their widest collaboration by far since Avanade was launched in 2000. The company, which is a Microsoft-Accenture joint project, now boasts more than 22,000 employees and global sales that have reached $2 billion.
Based on an Accenture-conducted survey, around 75 percent of all businesses showed the intention to transfer to a hybrid cloud platform. While there are some computing resources which are in-house managed, there are those which are run within the public cloud.
According to Paul Daugherty, Accenture chief technology officer, most of the deployments of hybrid cloud today seemed to be fragmented. This means that different technologies are employed for different kinds of workloads.
The Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution is designed to unify all the resources and place them under a single management framework. It brings together Microsoft Azure and Accenture's own tools to efficiently manage hybrid clouds. The new platform is scheduled to launch next year.
"What customers are asking for is the ability to move to a hybrid cloud where they don't have to do the integration pieces," said Susan Hauser, corporate vice president for Microsoft's enterprise and partner group.
Microsoft, Accenture, and Avanade have their own key capabilities which are then integrated through the Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution in order to help enterprises "everything as a service."
"Our expanded relationship with Microsoft represents a game-changing proposition that addresses the biggest concerns and complexities our clients face as they look to leverage the cloud," said Pierre Nanterme, Accenture chairman and CEO.
The Hybrid Cloud Solution is currently being piloted at Freeport-McMoRan, one of the biggest international natural resource companies. The company is working on improving its mining operations by creating a secured way to connect, manage, and capture machine-generated data from the drills, trucks, and other assets in the mine.
"We are looking to capture the benefits of hybrid cloud and engaged Accenture and Microsoft to explore how we can accelerate our journey," said VP and CIO Bertrand Odinet of Freeport-McMoRan.
