Ian Brown, Senior Analyst, IT Services

Accenture and Orange Business Services (OBS) have formed an alliance to support large enterprises with their cloud strategies. Accenture will provide expertise and skills in the planning, implementation, and management of cloud services with an industry solutions focus. OBS will provide its end-to-end infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and associated managed services.

This isn’t the first example of Accenture partnering on cloud services: it already has agreements with Dell and Microsoft. The significance of this alliance is that OBS is European and has cloud data centers in France. It is mutually beneficial in that it provides Accenture with a pragmatic means to allay European customers’ current sensitivity to data privacy issues, while OBS benefits from partnering with a leading SI that has the industry solutions skills it lacks.

Initially, the alliance will have most relevance to enterprises headquartered in France. OBS stands to gain most in …