Accenture Teams with Google Cloud, McAfee Puts Spotlight on ‘Shadow IT’

Accenture partners working in the life sciences field have more opportunity to expand value as the result of a multiyear partnership announced Tuesday, and new findings from McAfee should point cloud channel partners to additional revenue streams. Check out this short roundup.

Accenture Chooses Google Cloud as Sole Provider for Life Sciences Platform

Accenture said on Tuesday it has chosen Google Cloud as the sole cloud technology provider for its life sciences platform, Intient.

The global professional services firm also is counting on partners, independent software vendors and content providers who work with biotech and pharma clients to add value to Intient through their own development contributions, since Google Cloud supports open-source technology.

A spokeswoman for Google Cloud told Channel Futures these partners do not have to be part of Google Cloud’s channel program to participate because the platform belongs to Accenture.

Intient, which Accenture launched last May, focuses on big data, with the ultimate goal of improving patient care. The platform not only secures and stores data to enable faster clinical trials, it also applies artificial intelligence, robotic process automation and advanced analytics to give researchers actionable insights.

Google Cloud’s Tariq Shaukat

Those capabilities include discovery, research, clinical development and treatment delivery so users “gain insights that correlate symptoms, events, and treatments in new and unexpected ways,” said Tariq Shaukat, president at Google Cloud.

Overall, the aim is to “help bring innovative treatments to patients around the world, with greater speed, safety and efficacy,” said Simon Eaves, group chief executive of products at Accenture.

Accenture worked with more than 25 life sciences companies over seven years to create Intient.

The new Accenture-Google Cloud agreement comes as an extension of the companies’ work together over the past eight years. Now, though, Google Cloud is secured as the only cloud vendor for any current and future solutions that fall under Intient for life sciences.

McAfee Report Underscores Dire Need for Cloud Channel Expertise

Shadow IT – the practice of buying and using technologies without the knowledge of the IT team – remains a big and dangerous problem for organizations.

So too do unmanaged personal devices, and almost all the risk boils down to use of the cloud, according to McAfee in its newly published research, “Enterprise Supernova: The Data Dispersion Cloud Adoption and Risk Report.”

The findings, released on Tuesday, demonstrate quite clearly the opportunity for managed service providers, VARs and other channel partners specializing in cloud to provide even more guidance and assistance to their enterprise clients.

McAfee surveyed 1,000 organizations in 11 countries and uncovered the following statistics, among others:

• More than half (52%) of companies use cloud services that have had user data stolen in a breach, because of shadow IT and the internet as a whole.
• One in four companies has had its sensitive data downloaded from the cloud to an unmanaged personal device, where IT cannot see or control what happens to the data.
• Only 31% of companies have consistent data protection across their devices, networks and cloud services.
• Nearly one in 10 files shared in the cloud with sensitive data uses a link open to the public, an increase of 111% year over year.
• Companies that don’t monitor their cloud services likely miss more than 40,000 data loss incidents every month.
• The percentage of files stored in the cloud and containing sensitive data rose from 18% in 2016 to 26% in 2019.

Each of these bullet points indicates areas where the channel can step in. Organizations continue to replace on-premises software with cloud counterparts at a rapid rate, and this increases security complexities and considerations. Often, though, IT departments are too understaffed to stay on top of all the areas that require examination. Channel partners are best equipped to fill the gaps.