Accenture announced the Accenture Cloud Platform which offers workload management flexibility, effectively and more securely across on-premise private and public clouds.
The consultancy said enterprise-grade capabilities such as flexible cloud integration options and unified billing analytics — delivered via a centralized management control framework, provide the ability to broker, orchestrate, manage and govern multiple enterprise cloud solutions on demand, at speed, from a single platform, with the assurance enterprises expect from Accenture.
A discovery engine and an exposed application programming interface now allows users to access services either through the Accenture Cloud Platform portal, through applications directly, or through the native cloud provider console.
This provides flexible integration options and greater resiliency, enabling organizations to stay on top of and leverage new service introductions and innovations from cloud service providers quickly, helping to improve enterprise productivity and competitiveness.
The platform provides a centralized view of usage patterns and unified billing with access to in-depth analytics for visibility of overall cloud spend, providing full budgetary control.
"Cloud computing is essential to delivering the capabilities required by digital businesses, yet many enterprises struggle with managing separate cloud accounts and remain uncertain about moving both new workloads and legacy systems to the cloud," said Michael Liebow, global managing director, Accenture Cloud Platform. "The new, robust capabilities of the Accenture Cloud Platform help enterprises capitalize on the flexibility and agility of cloud, while enterprise-grade governance and control and enhanced security provide the peace of mind of traditional infrastructure – all in an easily consumed ‘pay as you go’ service model."
Since its launch last year, hundreds of clients — in industries ranging from insurance and oil and gas, to media and entertainment — have already leveraged the Accenture Cloud Platform to rapidly access private and public cloud while maintaining control and oversight. A key enabler for helping clients make the journey to hybrid cloud, the vendor-neutral Accenture Cloud Platform supports private and public cloud technology from a broad range of leading global providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and NTT Communications, among other.
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"Many enterprise clients have had to ‘back into the cloud’ from a variety of legacy IT systems, rather than having the luxury of being built for the cloud from inception," said Charles Sutherland, executive vice president of Research for HfS Research. "The Accenture Cloud Platform, which has evolved dramatically over the past year, provides the brokerage and integration services that enterprises need in order to orchestrate the acquisition and deployment of cloud services across a variety of hybrid cloud options, helping them keep pace with the ever-increasing complexity of their cloud environments."
Additional new features of the Accenture Cloud Platform include:
– Managed service model. Now cloud management is delivered as a service to enterprises via a fully automated, self-service model. The platform can be delivered in a matter of days or weeks in a consumption-based model. This provides ultimate flexibility in composing the set of management tools that are most appropriate for individual needs.
– Public and private cloud integration. The platform now enables the management of on-premise private cloud solutions built on Open Stack, VMware vCloud Suite and others.
– Application and platform blueprinting. Containing all the key information to successfully build a complete compute stack and deploy applications in the cloud – including server, software, storage, network, images and firewall details, and how they all relate — the Accenture Cloud Platform’s automated, self-service blueprints enable multiple cloud services to be bundled, provisioned and deployed from a single model across public and private cloud providers while adhering to enterprise architecture guidelines and policies.
– Strong security and reduced compliance risk. The Accenture Cloud Platform offers fully automated, self-serve and managed security services like patching, back-up, monitoring and the ability to set policies for networks, machine sizes and images with full integration to an enterprise directory to ensure authorized, role-based access.
– Increased control and governance. The platform simplifies oversight by providing central monitoring of service usage and delivery across multiple services and private and public clouds. A one-stop-shop to request and provision pre-approved cloud services, the platform also provides policy management and approval workflow control, along with a suite of billing, chargeback and cost analytics, helping to make enterprise management and scale of cloud services easier.
This announcement is part of Accenture’s investment of more than $400 million in cloud technologies, capabilities and training by 2015 to focus on delivering the right cloud services from its network of providers, as well as blending its own industry solutions and innovations with third party offerings. Accenture has worked on more than 8,000 cloud computing projects for clients, including nearly 75 percent of the Fortune Global 100, and has more than 14,000 professionals trained in cloud computing.
