Accenture and VMware have announced an expanded collaboration and the launch of a dedicated business group that would aid the organisations to adopt a "cloud first" strategy.

For this initiative, Accenture has been supported with close to 200 cloud professionals trained in VMware products and services, the Accenture VMware Business Group would help the clients tap into the powerful capabilities and elasticity of the cloud.

The new business group is part of Accenture Cloud First, which Accenture launched in 2020 with a $3 billion investment in new capabilities, solutions, partnerships and client engagements to help clients shape, move and operate their businesses in the cloud.

In a statement, Julie Sweet, Chief Executive Officer, Accenture states, "Cloud is the single most powerful tool for mastering change. As organisations accelerate their move to the cloud and edge over the next few years, the Accenture VMware Business Group will help deliver the speed, scale and security they need to fundamentally reinvent their businesses and create more value."

The Accenture VMware Business Group will invest in joint go-to-market and sales operations, training of more Accenture practitioners in VMware technologies and the development of new service offerings, assets and accelerators underpinned by VMware technologies.

The two companies will also develop pre-engineered vertical industry solutions, including a platform to help telecommunications companies accelerate the rollout of 5G and edge computing services.

Pat Gelsinger, Chief Executive Officer, VMware says, "To meet the demands of today's unprecedented business environment, organizations must employ a multi-cloud strategy -- more rapidly than ever before. Increasingly, customers are running their applications on one or more clouds, datacentres and the edge and the Accenture VMware Business Group will bring together the world-class teams and expertise required, with the speed, agility, and resilience that organizations demand, today and tomorrow."

The new business group will launch a specialized VMware Cloud Migration Factory to migrate computing workloads to the cloud rapidly, more securely and confidently, using highly automated processes that have been fine-tuned by the migration and modernisation of thousands of applications.