Accenture and Microsoft in conjunction with their joint venture Avanade, launched the new business group ‘Accenture Microsoft Business Group’. The new group elevates a longstanding strategic alliance, expanding combined service capabilities, global scale and joint solution development to help clients overcome disruption and lead transformation in their industries.
Majority owned by Accenture, Avanade was founded in 2000 by Accenture LLP and Microsoft.
The Accenture Microsoft Business Group will be led by Emma McGuigan, senior managing director, Accenture, who has been with the company for more than 20 years in various technology leadership roles. Adam Warby will continue to serve as the CEO of Avanade.
In response, the new organization represents the largest partner investment in harnessing the enterprise-wide potential of Microsoft technology to date. Building on the success of Avanade, the group will bring together more than 45,000 dedicated professionals – the largest group of Microsoft solution experts in the world. With new joint products and services built on the Microsoft cloud, clients will be able to engage customers in new ways, empower employees, reimagine operations and invent new products and services.
Speaking with Paul Daugherty, Accenture’s chief technology & innovation officer and chairman of the Avanade board,“The Accenture Microsoft Business Group is a major step forward in our decades-long relationship with Microsoft. It brings Accenture’s broad industry experience and transformation skills together with Microsoft’s powerful digital technologies and Avanade’s specialization in the Microsoft ecosystem, The demand for digital transformation, powered by the cloud, has never been greater. We are bringing the leading capabilities of our companies together to meet this demand and deliver innovation to our clients.”
Judson Althoff, executive vice president, Worldwide Commercial Business at Microsoft said, “Every company is becoming a digital company. Building on our successful partnership with Accenture and Avanade, we will help customers fuel innovation at scale and lead their industries into the future. This is core to our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
“The new Accenture and Microsoft Business group brings together the leading technology innovation and industry experience from our companies to help clients transform their businesses and become intelligent enterprises,” said Bhaskar Ghosh, group chief executive, Accenture Technology Services.
As digital disruption and innovation often occurs within industries, the group will co-invest in functional and industry solutions based on Microsoft technologies, with a mission to provide clients with the most comprehensive set of services focused on user experience, analytics and AI, cloud, security, IoT and other critical areas.
To help organizations across all industries, the new group will emphasize helping clients migrate to Microsoft Azure and effectively harness the power of data and artificial intelligence, optimize Microsoft business processes with Microsoft Dynamics 365, and foster modern work and collaboration with Microsoft 365.
Together, Accenture and Avanade have delivered more than 35,000 Microsoft projects for more than 4,000 clients around the world, helping companies such as Carlsberg and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) advance their digital transformation agendas.
Accenture and Avanade have been named Microsoft Alliance Partner of the Year 14 times, and Accenture was recently ranked number one by industry analyst firm HFS Research in their Top 10 for Microsoft AI Services 2019 report.
