OREANDA-NEWS. Capgemini, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services, today announced the expansion of its cloud services program, with the news of Microsoft being the program’s first of several cloud service providers to join, which will enable organizations to take advantage of a broader range of cloud services. The initiative ‘Capgemini Cloud Choice with Microsoft’ – is a unique set of services and offerings that focus on enabling cloud-based business transformation and the implementation of business and technology solutions by using Microsoft’s cloud technologies. These services and offers from Capgemini will include Cloud Advisory, Managed Platform Services and applied integrated innovation that will help organizations become more agile and focus more strategically on their business operations. ‘Capgemini Cloud Choice with Microsoft’ will provide managed ‘as a service’ cloud solutions tailored to industry needs. Example solutions include:
  1. OneShare – to accelerate the provisioning of test & development on Microsoft Azure and control costs through usage monitoring and resource scheduling; 
  2.  SkySight - an Azure-like private cloud to help enterprises quickly deploy new applications, leverage competitively-priced managed services and benefit from rapid deployment and configuration;
  3. Unique Capgemini industry-focused IP offerings such as a tailored Banking Platform.
    Created by Capgemini’s domain-focused experts, these IP-based solutions can be easily configured to specific client needs, to help reduce total cost of ownership. The solutions encompass hybrid, public, hosted and private cloud services using Azure and offer customers an integrated platform which can be easily installed to take advantage of existing technology investments. The ‘as a service’ model will enable enterprises to have increased control over software upgrades and to have more time to focus on driving new innovations and business transformation.

R “Ray” Wang (@rwang0) from Constellation Research explained:  "Digitalization of business is a key factor when it comes to the accelerated pace of change. Information flows faster.  It’s not technology alone, it’s how that technology is being applied to business models. That’s why you have to get to digital, and that’s why we need to talk about cloud — it’s the foundation for digital transformation."

Faced with the challenge of declining mail volume but huge growth in the parcel business, PostNL, the Dutch postal organization decided to transfer the majority of its IT systems onto the Microsoft public cloud, Azure. Migration started in 2013 and will finish by the end of 2015. Marcel Krom, CIO PostNL said: "Sogeti, a subsidiary of the Capgemini Group, has helped us to define our roadmap to migrate more than 40 applications and now operates its platform Cloud. We have reduced costs by more than 20% and gained flexibility in handling volume variances."