Accenture and Cisco launch joint services drive

Accenture and Cisco have jointly launched a major initiative to deliver collaboration and datacenter virtualization services to large companies.

The two suppliers have created a virtual group that will “design, build, and run business solutions to help companies integrate unified communication and collaboration tools into multiple applications across companies' IT infrastructures.”

The alliance will target key, IT-intensive verticals, including telecommunications, health care, and government to financial services, energy, and utilities.

“Our clients face a range of challenges, from reducing operational costs and managing complex consolidations to competing globally and facing competitors with new cost-efficient business models,” said Andre Hughes, managing director for Accenture, who leads the virtual group. “We formed the Accenture & Cisco Business Group to provide a seamless services team that can help clients improve their performance.”

The initial offerings focus on customer contacts, unified communications, and collaboration and infrastructure transformation.

The Oracle-Cisco Customer Contact Transformation Solution promises to bring together customer relationship management, analytics, workflow performance, and hiring software applications with collaboration products.

The Unified Communications and Collaboration Solution promises to combine “an understanding of the client's business processes, IT architecture and how users actually adopt technology,” to help improve collaboration and operational performance and to accelerate decision-making.

The Infrastructure Transformation Solution uses Accenture's business process experts and Cisco's networking experts to optimize networks and datacenters.