Accenture and AWS expand their alliance to help organizations achieve digital sovereignty

In today's digital age, data has become one of the most valuable assets any organization has. But, as ever more of this data moves to the cloud, companies and governments are increasingly asking themselves how they can exert control over this critical asset.

This is having a growing impact on organizations. Accenture’s recent research finds a massive 84% saying European Union regulations now have a moderate to large impact on their data handling. And half of European CXOs see digital sovereignty as a top issue when selecting cloud vendors.

Balancing innovation with trust

With the regulatory environment still evolving, and cloud capabilities for digital sovereignty growing, some business leaders are left unsure of exactly what their sovereignty requirements are – let alone how best to meet them.

In some cases, this uncertainty is slowing or even preventing an organization’s journey to cloud. It’s led some to believe that to meet their sovereignty requirements they have to use feature-limited separate solutions, or forego the public cloud entirely and keep their data and infrastructure in house.

The difficulty is these organizations are then prevented from tapping into the full power of hyperscale cloud. And they miss out on all the opportunities it creates to innovate, transform, grow, create value, become more sustainable, and inherit security at scale.

Expanding Accenture and AWS alliance on digital sovereignty

To help organizations navigate these issues, Accenture and AWS have further expanded their 15-year alliance to create a powerful new digital sovereignty partnership. Bringing our combined expertise and experience of cloud technology, industry needs, regulatory change, and market dynamics to bear on digital sovereignty, our goal is to help companies reduce the uncertainty, resolve the complexity, and choose the right cloud solutions for their needs, in these four areas:

1.?????Management of data residency controls within Europe: Accenture configures guardrails on behalf of clients to ensure data stays in country and in Europe

2.?????Access control with encryption key management: Accenture provides guidance on AWS cloud encryption tools, including AWS KMS External Key Store (XKS)

3.?????Secure Cloud Foundation (SCF): We combine a comprehensive security landing zone leveraging AWS-native controls and services, and Accenture’s industry experience in implementing enterprise environments on AWS using well-architected practices. SCF solution includes Identity and Access Management, Logging and Monitoring, Data security and Governance.

4.?????Accenture's Infrastructure Cyber Resilience: The solution on AWS ensures clients can establish a secure environment, leveraging AI/ML capabilities to detect potential risks, and safeguarding their data against unauthorized access. Accenture’s implementation of robust measures can help prevent data loss and enable a fast infrastructure restore in the event of a cyber attack.

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Our shared guiding principle is that achieving digital sovereignty shouldn’t mean compromising on the power of the public cloud. Organizations should be able to benefit from all the innovation potential of the AWS Cloud while meeting all their needs for data residency, access restriction, encryption and resilience.

Sovereignty, built in

Thanks to commitments like AWS’s Digital Sovereignty Pledge, they can. AWS recognizes that earning customer trust is the foundation of every business — and that protecting customer data is the key to achieving this. Its Digital Sovereignty Pledge is a commitment to giving organizations the most advanced set of sovereignty controls while maintaining the highest standards of security and compliance.

This pledge is AWS's commitment to offering all AWS customers the most advanced set of sovereignty controls and features available in the cloud. The pledge includes expanding existing capabilities that allow organizations to have control over where data is stored and processed, verifiable control of data access, the ability to encrypt everything everywhere, and resilience of the cloud.

As AWS’s Cameron Brooks, General Manager Europe Public Sector, has explained, “The Accenture and AWS partnership to help public sector and regulated industry customers meet their digital and data sovereignty requirements comes at a pivotal time, as cloud demand in EMEA continues to accelerate. AWS recently pledged to expand its cloud offering to provide a full set of sovereignty controls and features without compromising capabilities, performance, innovation or scalability of full-featured public cloud.

Our journey to continue making AWS Cloud sovereign-by-design is strengthened by our strategic alliances with key consulting partners like Accenture. Accenture has 14 years+ AWS partnership experience, through the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG), and a proven ability to deliver complex cloud solutions for clients. Our partnership is built on trust and customer obsession, values that are essential to any customer navigating the complex landscape of sovereignty in their country.”

Cloud innovation with sovereignty

Complementing this, Accenture’s Sovereign Cloud Practice helps organizations unlock innovation in the cloud while complying with data privacy and security regulations. It offers cloud infrastructure and platform services, as well as data management and analytics solutions, from four sovereign cloud centers based at Innovation Hubs across Europe. At these centers, clients can meet Accenture?consultants and engage AWS?specialists to explore and leverage existing Accenture and AWS solutions for sovereignty. A client’s typical journey starts with analyzing the market dynamics and regulatory context, followed by a deep dive of the architectural and security aspects of managing sensitive data and workloads on the cloud, then ends with a co-creation session to define a possible adoption roadmap based on where technology solutions meet the client’s uses. Industry insights, cybersecurity deep competences and wide cloud digital transformation experience are all part of the value clients get from visiting the centers.

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Accenture’s Koen Schelfaut, Cloud First Europe Lead, has explained the value of this offering: “With sovereign cloud on the cusp of mainstream adoption in Europe, business leaders need to be confident they’re making the right choices. Accenture’s four sovereign cloud centers in Kronberg, Trondheim, Paris and Rome proactively address and solve our clients’ sovereign cloud requirements with dedicated support from industry experts and Accenture Cloud First specialists in technology, change management, security, and business processes. Our centers are also a place to collaborate with partners across the cloud ecosystem.

Together with leading cloud provider AWS, we offer public sector clients across Europe the support they need in addressing strategic challenges while enabling innovation in a way that aligns with European values and standards.”

Time to increase control of the cloud

The combined expertise of Accenture and AWS means organizations can continue to innovate and transform with the correct mix of cloud solutions for their needs. But with the added peace of mind that the data and digital assets they store, share, process and use are secure, compliant, and sovereign by design.

In fact, Accenture research indicates that companies see a whole range of additional benefits resulting from this:

·???????Better control of data across internal operations and with external partners.

·???????Increased customer and employee trust.

·???????Greater resilience and protection from external disruption.

·???????Better supplier integration thanks to a common data layer.

·???????Increased cloud agility from choosing the right mix of cloud solutions.

If you’d like to find out more about how Accenture’s and AWS partnership can help your own organization, do not hesitate to add a comment below or get in touch with us here at Accenture. Let’s kick-start a digital sovereignty journey that balances better performance and innovation with greater trust and control in public cloud.