The gold standard in enterprise cloud computing has arrived: Accenture and Microsoft launch new hybrid cloud platform to accelerate enterprise-wide adoption

As we continue to invest to deliver the industry’s most complete cloud for the global enterprise we are very pleased to announce our expansion of our long-standing strategic alliance with Accenture through the introduction of the Accenture Hybrid Cloud Solution for Microsoft Azure, a powerful hybrid cloud platform designed to bring new capabilities, economics and innovation to the enterprise.

Working with Avanade, we are co-funding and co-engineering this platform with new hybrid cloud technologies and services to help enterprises build and manage enterprise-wide cloud infrastructure and applications.

This agreement is the most far-reaching collaboration between Accenture and Microsoft since the 2000 joint venture to launch Avanade, a leading Microsoft solution provider with more than 22,000 employees and US $2 billion in global sales.

What does this mean for Utility companies? Utilities will always have a mix of applications and data some of which are ready made for the scale and computing power of the public cloud and some that need to separate from the public cloud due to criticalityof the information and data for things such as critical infrastructure protection. Having an industrial strength enterprise-grade hybrid cloud platform that can address both scenarios at scale is a very attractive offer for Utilities worldwide.

I strongly encourage you to learn more about this ground breaking announcement and how your company can leverage our joint investment to help you create customer value by going here. May the Cloud be with You! – Jon C. Arnold