Professional services company Accenture has renewed its joint business group with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Accenture and AWS will make an additional joint investment over the next five years to help clients spur cloud innovation. Also, the investment will accelerate business value at scale by delivering solutions through the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG).

Cloud Continuum

Karthik Narain is global lead of Accenture Cloud First.

Accenture’s Karthik Narain

“On the cloud continuum, breakthrough innovations will continue at a rapid pace. Harnessing those innovations for competitive advantage will require a commitment to permanent reinvention,” Narain said. “Together, we’re investing with AWS to help companies prioritize and invest in people transformation as much as tech transformation, which yields an average of 60% higher cloud return on investment.”

The extended AABG relationship will help organizations address the technology, human and business dimensions of cloud change. In addition, it will do so at scale with greater speed and certainty. Accenture’s investment with AWS brings timely resources for Accenture Cloud First. The multi-service group provides the full stack of cloud services created specifically to help clients become cloud-first businesses. In short, this is so they can accelerate their digital transformation, innovate faster and create differentiated, sustainable value.

New Accelerators

Over the next five years, Accenture will develop a range of new accelerators to address the biggest challenges in cloud migrations. Subsequently, the goal is to help businesses adopt AWS innovations up to 50% faster. As part of this investment, Accenture will also continue to invest in data-driven solutions for talent development and organizational change. These are critical and often cited as a key barrier to realizing cloud value.

Matt Garman is senior vice president of sales and marketing at AWS.

AWS’ Matt Garman

“We learned through experience that our customers’ success often hinges on two key factors: speed and the ability to adopt new ways of working,” Garman said. “Our investment to create reusable accelerators and mechanisms with Accenture intends to make cloud transformation and change programs easier and more predictable — so customers can continuously innovate and lead their industries.”

The extended relationship will help clients achieve industry differentiation by tapping into the AABG joint portfolio of 175 assets and 20,000 cloud specialists. They hold 24,000 AWS certifications. As a result, Accenture says this makes itamong the top systems integrators in the world with vast AWS resources. Accenture and AWS have co-created nearly 40 solutions for 16 industries with proven use-case relevance to jump-start client value.