Accenture, CentriLogic Cloud Deals Represent Way to Thrive Amid COVID-19

This month, two channel-centric companies with global presences – Accenture and CentriLogic – announced cloud acquisitions. While the deals were in the works prior to the coronavirus pandemic, they still signify that COVID-19 may not have the power to slow partners or vendors focused on next-generation technologies.

Indeed, if estimates from research firm IDC stay on target, cloud is the silver lining as the world works to survive an unprecedented economic threat. The transactions recently made public by Accenture and CentriLogic represent a small, yet positive, part of that new reality.

On April 20, Ireland’s Accenture, a worldwide professional services firm, said it has secured Paris-based Gekko, an Amazon Web Services consultancy, as its latest purchase. Accenture is an AWS premier consulting partner.

Then, on April 21, Canada’s CentriLogic, a managed IT solutions provider that also sells through fellow partners, said it has snapped up ObjectSharp. Headquartered in Toronto, ObjectSharp is a cloud-native development and application services firm specializing in Microsoft Azure; CentriLogic is a longtime Microsoft gold partner.

Neither CentriLogic nor Accenture disclosed the financial terms of their respective transactions.

Of interest is that the spread of COVID-19 still did not impede the timing of these acquisitions. That’s namely because enterprises, SMBs, nonprofits and other organizations throughout the world now need cloud technologies more than ever.

Robert Offley, CEO of CentriLogic, agreed.

CentriLogic’s Robert Offley

“COVID-19 has thrust all businesses into practically overnight digital transformation,” Offley told Channel Futures. “We experienced this beginning in the second week of March, when most metropolitan areas in North America went into shelter-in-place mode and, hence, created a work-from-home imperative. That very first Friday, CentriLogic had numerous customers approach us with a need to provide them with expanded infrastructure and upgraded security to prepare them for the transition.”

One customer immediately tapped the MSP and data center provider to help it support 850 employees working from home. That’s 800 more than it was equipped to handle. Bringing on ObjectSharp during the COVID-19 pandemic will only make other such deployments smoother, Offley noted.

Accenture was reluctant to talk about if it is steering more or fewer cloud deployments during the spread of coronavirus. The company is traded publicly.

“We’re working to help clients outmaneuver uncertainty with very fluid changes daily so it won’t be appropriate to make projections about our business,” Cédric Le Yeuc’h, managing director at Accenture Technology in France and Benelux, told Channel Futures. “We need to look at this with a human and business lens more than ever.”

With that in mind, Accenture is keenly aware of the need to help clients achieve resilience. And cloud will prove critical to that capability.

“The cloud offers the best solution to scale system resources as required,” Le Yeuc’h said. “The cloud also helps by enabling the deployment of instant innovation and aligning technology costs to rapid fluctuations in demand.”

For example, he added, the Singapore government used cloud architecture to …