Accenture and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced newly expanded services and resources led by the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG) to help clients accelerate their pace of innovation. Launched in 2015, the AABG combines the resources, technical capability and industry knowledge of Accenture and AWS to help enterprises unlock innovation, drive business value and support growth through cloud adoption and transformation.
The continued investment and expansion of services comes at a time of market disruption for clients demanding deeper capability, established models and methodologies to help scale innovation, and measurable business value. With hundreds of enterprise transformation projects completed, the AABG is now spearheading countless innovation projects powered by new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), analytics and cloud native strategies. This disruption calls for more capability to help enterprises combine digital innovation with legacy transformation while adopting established industry platforms.
A new Applied Intelligence Studio for AWS in Seattle, where clients can access AI specialists from AWS and Accenture to apply AWS ML services, such as Amazon SageMaker, and integrate leading practices more rapidly for burgeoning innovation projects. The AABG team will identify industry- and domain-specific use cases where leading technologies can be applied to help solve key business challenges. For example, the team has already started to enhance Accenture's existing client solutions on AWS. Among these are a predictive maintenance solution for Japanese telecommunications company KDDI to enable near real-time ML against IoT data, allowing KDDI to better scale its operations for manufacturing clients and offer new pricing models. The solution was developed in collaboration with Accenture's Applied Intelligence practice.
The development of LaunchPad, an agile network of Accenture and AWS specialists skilled in strategic AWS services, core to quickly enabling digital transformation beyond traditional cost reductions. Steeped with industry knowledge, these specialists are embedded in Accenture Liquid Studios and innovation centers around the world. For example, at the new Liquid Studio in San Francisco, specialists from Accenture and AWS take clients through design-thinking workshops, helping them create project prototypes and incubate industry-specific solutions that can be scaled rapidly on AWS.
Additional tools, templates and leading industry solutions, backed by the collective knowledge of the AABG, to help clients be nimbler and scale services more easily. Among these will be new Industry Solution Incubators to help clients leverage modular, modern platforms that integrate the best of their existing assets with analytics and ML via platform-enabled delivery. For instance, last month Accenture, AWS, and Merck announced a cloud-based informatics research platform to help organizations in the life sciences industry improve productivity, efficiency and innovation in the early stages of drug development. Clients can expect similar solutions targeted at industry-specific challenges.
The creation of Blockchain Express, which is aimed to be a faster, more cost-effective way for AWS clients who are interested in blockchain services to explore the benefits of distributed ledger technologies (DLT). This cross-industry offering will be a condensed five- to six-week engagement that includes access to Accenture's specialists and range of services to map out how to drive value from DLT within the enterprise. Additionally, it will include the rapid development of an operational DLT network that will enable companies to accelerate their blockchain adoption journey.
“Our strong business momentum means we can invest more resources to focus on a comprehensive transformation for our clients who are asking for legacy transformation, quick-hitting digital innovation, and industry-focused solutions,” said Chris Wegmann, global managing director of AABG and Accenture's AWS practice. “Our experience has shown that bringing our best talent forward with cross-team collaboration helps enable a path to success. It's about combining the power of Accenture and AWS to help clients acceleration innovation at a time of epic disruption across all industries.”
“The Accenture AWS Business Group provides extensive experience, resources, methodologies, and learnings to help clients rapidly deliver business value and innovation,” said Terry Wise, global vice president of Channels & Alliances at Amazon Web Services, Inc. “Our customers are asking us to help them innovate faster by leveraging new AWS services such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and analytics.”
To date, the AABG has helped hundreds of clients leverage the full power of AWS. Accenture today announced that ETS, the world's largest private, non-profit educational testing and assessment organization, has invested in a cloud migration to AWS to meet its digital transformation goals of enabling innovation and driving operational improvements.
Accenture and AWS had been working together for nearly a decade before forming the AABG in 2015. The AABG extends that collaboration, helping hundreds of clients with their move to AWS — from strategy ideation, to migration, to operation and run — securely and at scale, all powered by AABG's joint investments in world-class accelerators, centers of excellence and digital skills. To date, the AABG has trained more than 5,000 Accenture technologists and earned more than 2,100 AWS certifications.
