SEATTLE, June 19, 2020 — Avanade and Databricks have formed a strategic partnership to build on their success to date in helping enterprise clients scale their Azure Data and AI investments. Together, the companies will focus on helping organizations optimize their operations by leveraging data science and data engineering capabilities, at a time when resilience and agility are at the top of most C-suite agendas.

Avanade will become Databricks’ key global partner and benefit from its deep knowledge and experience in massive scale data engineering, and collaborative data science, complementing Avanade’s Azure data and AI capabilities. In turn, Databricks will gain access to Avanade’s global presence in 25 countries, as well as its market leading client solutions, capabilities and integration know-how on the Azure and Azure Databricks platform. Initially, projects will focus on Financial Services, Retail and Manufacturing.

The companies have been working together since 2018 and recently joined forces to optimize the global delivery network for thyssenkrupp, a German diversified industrial group with 162,000 employees in 78 countries. Together, thyssenkrupp, Avanade and Databricks developed “alfred.simOne”—a powerful solution that uses AI and large amounts of data to run simulations based on network configurations. It provides detailed and vital insights into transportation costs and inventory levels. Thanks to alfred.simOne, thyssenkrupp’s teams are using the resulting output to make better logistics management decisions.

“When we embarked on this project, we wanted to think outside the box and find a partner who would help us do that; help us create something new,” says Sebastian Smerat, head of CoE Data Analytics and Business Intelligence at thyssenkrupp. “In Avanade and Databricks we found the ideal combination of innovation and expertise that could address our complex needs on a global scale and collaborate with us to build the solution we were looking for.”

“At a time when organizations are rethinking their approach and business resilience is being tested to its fullest, our partnership with Databricks will enable us to further help clients harness the potential of data science and machine learning,” says Luke Pritchard, Global Data Lead for Avanade “The ability to extract near real-time information from their data, at scale will enable clients to pivot their strategic direction and navigate current uncertainties across their entire enterprise.”.

“We see organizations moving to modernize into cloud services and expand their use of data science and machine learning,” says Michael Hoff, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Partners, Databricks. “Our partnership with Avanade will help enterprises end to end by aligning to the organization’s strategy and co-creating high value use cases that embed AI throughout business processes and experiences at scale to achieve desirable business outcomes.”

About Avanade

Avanade is the leading provider of innovative digital and cloud services, business solutions and design-led experiences on the Microsoft ecosystem. Our professionals bring bold, fresh thinking combined with technology, business and industry expertise to help make a human impact on our clients, their customers and their employees. We are the power behind the Accenture Microsoft Business Group, helping companies to engage customers, empower employees, optimize operations and transform products, leveraging the Microsoft platform. Avanade has 38,000 professionals in 25 countries, bringing clients our best thinking through a collaborative culture that honors diversity and reflects the communities in which we operate. Majority owned by Accenture, Avanade was founded in 2000 by Accenture LLP and Microsoft Corporation. Learn more at http://www.avanade.com.

About Databricks

As the leader in Unified Data Analytics, Databricks helps organizations make all their data ready for analytics, empower data science and data-driven decisions across the organization, and rapidly adopt machine learning to outpace the competition. By providing data teams with the ability to process massive amounts of data in the Cloud and power AI with that data, Databricks helps organizations innovate faster and tackle challenges like treating chronic disease through faster drug discovery, improving energy efficiency, and protecting financial markets. See real world examples. Databricks was founded in 2013 and has thousands of global customers including Comcast, Shell, HP, Expedia, and Regeneron. Databricks is founded by the original creators of popular open source projects, including Apache Spark, Delta Lake, MLflow and Koalas.


Source: Avanade