Accenture to invest over $400 mn in cloud technologies

Global technology and consultancy giant Accenture today said it will invest more than $400 million by 2015 in cloud technologies, capabilities and training.

"As part of this strategic initiative, Accenture will invest 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," the company said in a statement.

Cloud computing facilitates sharing of technological resources, software and digital information. It operates on a pay-per-use model, helping companies cut costs as they do not have to invest heavily on infrastructure.

The company has launched 'Accenture Cloud Platform' to help organisations integrate and manage cloud services across multiple vendors.

The Accenture Cloud Platform represents an important next step in the company's cloud strategy. The platform is already being used in more than 200 projects, the company said.

"We foresee the growing use of public cloud services... We are committed to moving our extensive portfolio of cloud offerings, broad ecosystem of alliance relationships, and large global client base to the cloud in all forms -- public, private and hybrid," Accenture Global Senior Managing Director (Cloud) Jack Sepple said.

As part of its overall investment, Accenture has created and expanded services on its cloud platform, including public and virtual private cloud infrastructure, data decommissioning, software systems testing and big data analytics solutions in the cloud, the statement said.

According to research firm IDC, the total market size for cloud technologies is expected to grow to $98 billion in 2016 from about $40 billion in 2012.