Microsoft New Zealand has announced a local partnership with KPMG New Zealand, pivotal to KPMG and its clients in boosting innovation and digital transformation journeys.
KPMG and Microsoft signed a global $5 billion alliance in 2019, designed to accelerate digital transformation for KPMG member firms and mutual clients. Microsoft Azure has been the backbone of the alliance with its global cloud-based platform. In 2020, KPMG was named the Global SI Digital Transformation 2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year.
Using Microsoft's Azure cloud and AI technologies, the local partnership agreement will enable KPMG New Zealand to help its clients improve decision-making, increase productivity, and achieve cost efficiencies across the public and private sectors.
KPMG is known for its technology advisory services. It partners with clients to help them obtain value from their technology and data assets, offering cloud and technology strategy, cybersecurity, data analytics, and AI services. KPMG has developed Microsoft Azure cloud-based solutions for notable clients across the public, retail and utilities sectors. The local partnership will allow KPMG to build its cloud-based solutions and offer them as-a-service to clients.
"At KPMG, our purpose is fuelling prosperity for all New Zealanders," says KPMG New Zealand chief executive, Godfrey Boyce.
"We live in a world of change and disruption, and our ability to reimagine, innovate and create actionable insights is critical to our future. KPMG must continuously digitally transform ourselves and help our clients and communities to do the same.
"Our global survey of CIOs shows that cloud is one of the top three technology investments required in today's new normal. By partnering with Microsoft, we can advise on cloud strategy and also facilitate end-to-end cloud migration enhanced with analytics, AI and digital technology."
According to IDC research, New Zealand will see public cloud adoption more than double over the next four years, adding $30 billion in direct revenues and 102,000 jobs to the economy. These jobs will include organisations that adopt cloud and the suppliers of hardware, software, and services supporting cloud delivery.
KPMG NZ plans to migrate its current Azure cloud services to the forthcoming New Zealand data centers from MS Azure sites hosted in Australia. It hopes to provide a local future-proofed environment to support the application needs of KPMG's technical consulting divisions and internal IT teams.
This capability strengthens any technology solutions required to meet New Zealand data residency rules, ensuring the data will remain within New Zealand and giving it additional protection under local privacy laws.
"One of the things Microsoft has in common with KPMG is our passion for helping local organisations realise the massive gains digital technologies and cloud are set to bring," says Microsoft New Zealand managing director, Vanessa Sorenson.
"That's why this partnership is so important - a business of the global scale and reach of KPMG has the power to drive change across all levels of our organisations and accelerate recovery".
KPMG says it intends to develop new Microsoft Azure products and services and deepen its digital capabilities to address the key challenges clients face, such as navigating the exponential rate of change in the digital world and rapidly evolving customer needs. Services will include everything from digital acceleration to supply chain transformation, change and talent management, data, analytics and AI, and cybersecurity, governance and risk and compliance.