With business complexity and operational change being impediments to achieving cloud value, how does generative artificial intelligence fit into the picture?

Gen AI is providing a new, huge flywheel needed to address cloud complexity for enhanced business value, according to Rajive Wickramasinghe (pictured), senior managing director and global lead of hybrid and emerging cloud platforms at Accenture PLC.

“The way we look at it is the cloud is the enabler for whatever the solution stack is … data powers everything, and AI is the differentiator,” Wickramasinghe said. “As we talk to our customer set, which is typically the G2000 enterprise customers … there’s a couple of things that they are very much talking to us about. One is, how do you really drive business value from the investments in the cloud? The second is how do they address complexity? I think AI and gen AI have a big role to play in how we solve those problems.”

Wickramasinghe spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante at VMware Explore 2023, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how gen AI is showcasing itself as a force to be reckoned with, as well as the Accenture and VMware Inc. partnership. (* Disclosure below.)

Why are Accenture and VMware joining hands?

By combining its business and IT transformation prowess with VMware’s innovative edge technology, Accenture delivers cloud computing transformations and application modernization to enterprises, according to Wickramasinghe. As a result, the companies have created joint offerings across application transformation, security, networking and cloud.

“We started partnering earnestly about 15 years ago,” Wickramasinghe said. “Since then, we’ve created a global practice around VMware. We have 2,500-plus certified practitioners deployed globally and a lot more associated with the practice. We’ve delivered more than 500 successful outcomes, projects for our clients. And we are looking to build on it.”

For strategic business results, Accenture and VMware are looking beyond their scope to see how AI can be effective. This is because gen AI has emerged as the new kid on the tech block that is top of mind for nearly all organizations, Wickramasinghe pointed out.

“We are very much in the thick of figuring out AI and gen AI; that’s a huge initiative for us,” he stated. “We continue to be very dialed in with what’s going on with our client’s business problems. We remain extremely relevant about addressing them and we are excited about our coming new fiscal year, which starts in September.”

Since modernization continues to be a burning issue in the enterprise world, AI is emerging as a stepping stone toward this objective. This is based on the need for intelligent application portfolios and automation, but all this will be powered by data, according to Wickramasinghe.

“I think there are two distinct buckets of problems and solutions,” he said. “One is how do you deploy the right AI capabilities to drive efficiency? How do you change fundamentally the interaction between a workload and its customer? There’s a lot that AI compute can do there, but the bigger problem and the immediate problem we are seeing is in order to do that, the currency is data.”

For business value to be driven beyond experimentation, AI comes in handy, according to Wickramasinghe. This is especially the case in the current complex multicloud environment.

“First is we look at the entire continuum,” he said. “What workloads do you have on public cloud? What belongs in private? How do you modernize? You look at that entire spectrum and then you bring AI.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMware Explore 2023:

(* Disclosure: Accenture PLC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Accenture nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE