Accenture announces intent to acquire French AWS consultancy Gekko

PARIS; April 20, 2020 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has agreed to acquire Gekko, a leading French Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services company. The acquisition would expand Accenture’s AWS resources in France to support enterprise migrations and development on cloud platforms, which has become the foundation for innovation and business transformation.

The acquisition requires prior consultation with the relevant works councils and would be subject to customary closing conditions. Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.

Providing consulting, integration and managed services on AWS, Gekko has more than 100 trained cloud professionals, with more than 85 AWS certifications and a deep relationship with AWS. Gekko is an AWS Advanced Partner, holds an AWS competency in Storage and is an AWS Authorized Training partner. Gekko is also part of the AWS Solution Provider and Well Architected Framework program.

Since its inception in 2015, Gekko has helped more than 80 clients, including some of the largest French companies, design, deploy and maintain a flexible, connected and secure cloud infrastructure.

For clients in France and across Europe, the acquisition of Gekko would strengthen Accenture’s general and industry-specific cloud experience in AWS technologies. The combination of Gekko’s deep skills in AWS with Accenture’s industry knowledge and experience in global large-scale cloud initiatives would now provide highly differentiated end-to-end services to the European market. Clients would benefit from full range cloud services including strategy ideation, migration and managed services.

“Aligned with our development strategy, the acquisition of Gekko would be another significant addition because it would give clients more support for public cloud options. Gekko would also be a major opportunity to accelerate our growth strategy in France,” said Olivier Girard, Accenture’s Geographic Unit managing director for France and Benelux . “ Accenture’s advantage is our ability to keep pace with evolving customer expectations. Our clients call on Accenture to help them innovate and transform their business. Gekko would bring key cloud, AI and DevOps skills and would help us serve a greater and more diverse range of clients in France and the broader European market.”

Cedric Le Yeuc’h, managing director at Accenture Technology in France and Benelux, added, “The acquisition of Gekko would underscore our multi-cloud strategy and would expand our AWS capabilities for clients to realize incremental business value through a cloud adoption and DevOps transformation. It would increase our on-shore AWS fully automated cloud operations and FinOps capabilities with Gekko’s delivery center located in the west of France. The acquisition of Gekko would enhance our position as one of the leading providers of AWS expertise and cloud transformation in the French market.”

“In the fast-growing cloud market, joining Accenture would be a unique opportunity to help even more organizations to leverage journey to the cloud for accelerating their digital transformations, growing their businesses and improving customer experiences,” said Roland Esnis and Julien Favre, co-founders and CEOs of Gekko. “By combining the renowned talent, reputation and capabilities of Gekko with Accenture’s strong team of AWS practitioners in France, we would be better positioned to lead the industry in cloud services in France.”

This acquisition would strengthen Accenture’s positions with key providers in the Cloud and AI, including ecosystem partners such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. It will also enhance Accenture’s end-to-end Intelligent Cloud & Infrastructure Services and will complement the capabilities and strategic objectives of the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG) within Accenture Technology in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Accenture’s AWS global community consists of more than 8,000 AWS trained professionals that hold over 5,500 AWS certification. The AABG is built on more than 13 years of partnership between Accenture and AWS and thousands of joint successful projects. Accenture is recognized by AWS with more than 20 AWS awarded competencies/service delivery designations.