Global mining company Rio Tinto is moving its core IT systems into the cloud with outsourcing and consulting firm Accenture.
The “as-a-service” model incorporates consumption based pricing to “ensure costs are fully flexible and in line with business demand”, said Rio Tinto.
The programme will include the modernisation of the company’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) and information management (IM) platforms, consolidating and hosting these applications in the public cloud. Under the terms of the agreement, Accenture will also manage the maintenance and upgrade of applications and related infrastructure, and will “transform” the global service desk and site support functions, Rio said.
Managed via the Accenture Cloud Platform, and adopting a “public cloud first policy”, the solution will “accelerate Rio Tinto’s journey towards a truly digital business”, the mining company said.
Rio expects to benefit from “significant” cost savings through increased business agility and cost flexibility from using cloud services, and from continued lower infrastructure prices “in line with cloud economic trends”. The solution includes a co-located innovation centre in Singapore.
“Rio Tinto is on an ambitious journey to a world-class IT delivery model that is innovative, adaptable and cost-effective, fully supporting our business priorities and group operating model,” said Rio Tinto Group CIO Simon Benney. “We selected Accenture to help us manage this transformation based on its global delivery capabilities, its vision for the intelligent business cloud and its ability to support our digital transformation programme.”
“This project redefines the delivery of application and infrastructure services,” said Pierre Nanterme, CEO of Accenture. “This solution will allow Rio Tinto to smartly connect its infrastructure, software applications, data and operations capabilities in order to become an agile, intelligent, digital business that can better navigate the commodities cycles.”