Accenture Plc and VMware Inc. today said they’re expanding a partnership and launching a new business group focused on accelerating cloud migration to the cloud, modernizing applications and using the cloud as a foundation for new business models.

The Accenture VMware Business Group will receive a multimillion-dollar investment from the two companies and employ a team of professionals with expertise in hybrid cloud and cloud migrations as well as cloud-native development, application modernization and security.

It will be supported by approximately 2,000 Accenture cloud professionals trained in VMware products and services, the companies said. The group is part of Accenture Cloud First, which the professional services company launched last year with a $3 billion investment.

The venture is a boost for VMware’s Tanzu application modernization portfolio that it introduced 18 months ago and has been steadily enhancing since. Modernization has become a hot topic thanks to the growing popularity of cloud-native technologies like software containers and microservices, which greatly simplify deployment and scaling.

The venture will invest in joint marketing and sales operations as well as training of more of Accenture’s 514,000 global employees in VMware technologies. It will bring new service offerings, assets and accelerators to market based on VMware technologies.

The two companies will also target vertical industries, beginning with a platform telecommunications companies can use to roll out of 5G and edge computing services more quickly.

“Organizations must employ a multicloud strategy more rapidly than ever before,” VMware Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger (pictured) said in a statement.

The new business group will launch a specialized VMware Cloud Migration Factory to provide a controlled environment for planning, testing, migrating and modernizing applications to public, private and/or hybrid clouds, the companies said.

Accenture is one of VMware’s largest global partners and VMware is used extensively in Accenture’s information technology organization.

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