Accenture Investing $3B In Cloud First Initiative

“We’re 20 percent in the cloud today. We believe we’ll move to around 80 percent in just five years. And what Accenture Cloud First is about is helping companies get [to the cloud] faster by bringing together all the capabilities with the singular focus on how are we going to re-platform at speed,” Accenture CEO Julie Sweet tells CNBC.

Accenture on Thursday said it is committing to spend $3 billion over the next three years to help businesses quickly build cloud-first infrastructures and to acceleration their digital transformation initiatives.

That investment, called Accenture Cloud First, will be led by Karthik Narain (pictured), currently the lead of the global professional services company’s technology initiatives. Narain, a 20-year veteran of Accenture, is slated to take over as the lead for Accenture Cloud First on October 1.

An Accenture spokesperson responded to a CRN request for further information with a commitment to set up a meeting with Accenture in the near future.

[Related: 5 Acquisitions That Accenture’s Made During The Coronavirus Pandemic]

However, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, in a Thursday video question-and-answer session on CNBC, said Accenture has seen a massive acceleration in the cloud business leading to a once-in-an-era re-platforming of global business.

“We’re 20 percent in the cloud today,” Sweet said. “We believe we’ll move to around 80 percent in just five years. And what Accenture Cloud First is about is helping companies get [to the cloud] faster by bringing together all the capabilities with the singular focus on how are we going to re-platform at speed.”

Accenture plans to spend $1 billion per year over the next three years will help businesses in three important ways, Sweet said.

First of all, with Accenture’s cloud partners across the full business spectrum, it is critical to not just move companies to the cloud, but move entire industries with a full range of roadmaps, learning, and the data integration focused on industry specializations, she said.

The second area is speed, including investments in improved automation and technology to help not just move businesses faster, but also to operate in the cloud with more and more productivity, Sweet said.

“Think about the cloud becoming a platform for their productivity,” she said.

The third is around talent and sustainability, Sweet said.

“If you’re re-platforming entire global businesses in the cloud, we have to do so in a sustainable way,” she said. “Which means, starting from what we’ve done in measuring from getting out of your data center to the cloud [and] what it does for the climate change. It’s around things like supply chains, making sure that you’re building in the ability to have the integrity of the supply chain, and that you’re re-skilling.”

Accenture Cloud First will include a new multi-service group of 70,000 cloud professional across the full range of the company’s industry and technology capabilities, and partnerships.

Accenture said the Accenture Cloud First group will integrate the company’s full range of cloud expertise, design skills, and insights from its history of modernizing business processes, and will encompass edge computing as a key focus area.