Bullish Accenture investing 'hard and fast' in cloud

Consultancy giant claims there is "enormous scope" to do more in the cloud space after snapping up Cloud Sherpas last year

Global consultancy giant Accenture is "aggressively and proactively positioning cloud-first solutions" to its customers as it looks to beef up its presence in the space.

Accenture is a global business giant - racking up net revenues of $31bn (£21.48bn) in 2015 and employing more than 370,000 staff worldwide - which focuses on professional services across a range of verticals.

After formalising its cloud business into a standalone unit in 2008, the firm organically grew its cloud proposition, becoming a leading Salesforce partner. At the end of last year, the company snapped up Google reseller Cloud Sherpas in a bid to expand its cloud offering.

The Cloud Sherpas acquisition closed in October and Accenture is currently in the process of integrating it.

Saideep Raj, Accenture's managing director for its Cloud First Applications division, said that Cloud Sherpas fits into a completely separate cloud business which effectively operates as a standalone unit.

He said that the acquisition demonstrates Accenture's lofty ambitions in the cloud space.

"Accenture is a leading partner in Salesforce - we have got almost three times the number of certified consultants of any other partner, and we are a leading partner in Google," he said.

"If you look at the other cloud solutions, we're leaders there too. Because we see the enormous take up, we continue to invest hard and fast. We're building out deeper industry tools. My point is that we are not sitting on our hands. Even though we are in a leadership position, we see enormous scope for us to do even more so will continue to invest to stay ahead of the rest of the pack.

"We're in this mode where we constantly fuel our cloud growth. We're investing very hard and we are aggressive positioning cloud solutions. We are very much leading with the cloud."

He insisted that having a separate, smaller cloud business as part of a global giant brings customers certain unique benefits which they cannot get some smaller cloud start-ups.

"We're driving much deeper industry business change," he said. "Solving customer engagement for an insurance provider is very different to providing to a high-tech manufacturer, or for a telecoms organisation. As you solve bigger problems, you need very industry-specific skills and experience. We are unparalleled in that."