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Microsoft Mega-Partner Accenture Plans Largest Windows 10 Migration

Accenture, the world's largest independent global IT consulting and systems integration firm, is also set to become the world's largest adopter of Windows 10.

The company plans to migrate its 400,000 employees to Windows 10 by the end of next year. The project, which Microsoft said is the largest known Windows 10 migration to date, is about 75 percent complete.

While upgrades of the nearly 2-year-old Windows 10 are on the rise, a recent survey found that just under half (46 percent) of organizations have migrated 10 percent or less of their PCs and devices to Windows 10, while 41 percent said they plan to have at least 51 percent migrated to Windows 10 within the next year. Accenture's plan to migrate so many employees to Windows 10 in relatively short order is notable.

However, it's not surprising that Accenture has fast-tracked its Windows 10 migration, given its position as one of Microsoft's closest partners. The two companies have a joint venture in Avanade. Accenture also gave a solid endorsement of the Microsoft Teams chat service when it was unveiled last November, and is a collaborator with Microsoft in a project to advance secure identities using blockchain.

Accenture also is the largest customer of Microsoft OneDrive, with 6 petabytes of business data stored in the cloud storage service, which is tied to Windows 10 and Office 365. Accenture is also making a big push internally with Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) service.

With a workforce that is four times the size of Microsoft's, Accenture's adoption of these Microsoft technologies gives it enough cover to say that it eats its own -- and Microsoft's -- dog food.

"Not only do we enable our people with the latest technology, we're also setting ourselves up to be a reference for the state of what's possible with Microsoft," said Accenture Managing Director Brand Nyers in a promotional video. "It's demonstrating to our clients that we can be a market leader in the adoption of Microsoft technology."

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.

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