Microsoft is adding significant cloud sales firepower to its arsenal as part of a new deal with EY in which the systems integrator giant works to train more that 150,000 of its workers on Microsoft technologies.
As part of the deal, London-based EY will implement one of the largest enterprise deployments of Microsoft Power Platform globally, train thousands of its professionals on Microsoft technologies and work to simplify regulatory hurdles to cloud adoption, among other goals.
The two companies will focus on new solutions and platforms to help organisations “address business and societal challenges at scale through digital transformation,” according to a statement. It will focus on improving back-office operations, particularly in regulated sectors including financial services, energy, health, government and manufacturing.
In a video published on Wednesday, EY Global Chairman and CEO Carmine Di Sibio called Microsoft EY’s “biggest alliance partner” and said that “80 per cent of our clients’ service solutions are platformed on Microsoft Azure or in the cloud.”
Also Read: Four Paths To A Dynamic Digital Transformation
More than 300,000 EY employees use Microsoft’s Teams collaboration app, Di Sibio said. More than 1 million client personnel access Microsoft-powered systems and process about 250 million transactions per day.
But EY has plenty more work in modernising clients’ technology operations. Di Sibio said in the video that only 25 per cent of clients at the start of the pandemic had digitised supply chains. Now, they want more tools to digitally track supply chains at all times.
In the video, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted Microsoft products such as Power Platform, Azure and Microsoft 365, which includes Teams, as ways to improve back-office operations in regulated industries from health care to manufacturing.
“Digital adoption curves are not slowing down,” Nadella said. “We’re experiencing, I would say, some real structural change across every industry, across every business function.”
During the company’s latest quarterly earnings call in July, Microsoft reported that revenue in its intelligent cloud division totaled $17.4 billion for the quarter, up 30 per cent year over year from $13.4 billion. The biggest driver for the growth was the 51-per cent increase in revenue for the Azure cloud platform, Microsoft said.
As part of the deal, EY will extend the EY Microsoft Services Group to provide clients with “deeper access” to more than 40,000 EY technology consulting professionals, according to the statement.
The tech giant will also integrate EY’s existing Financial Crime Platform and EY Comply, which manages and report financial regulatory requirements for financial institutions, into the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services. Cloud for Financial Services is part of Microsoft’s industry clouds strategy of deploying vertical-focused packages of cloud products and services.
The collaboration will lead to EY expanding managed services in areas such as tax, supply chain, risk and compliance, among other areas.
