Seattle, June 16, 2020

Avanade, the leading digital innovator on the Microsoft ecosystem, and Databricks, the leading provider of unified data analytics solutions, 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 organisations optimise 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 optimise 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 organisations 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 organisations moving to modernise 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 organisation’s strategy and co-creating high value use cases that embed AI throughout business processes and experiences at scale to achieve desirable business outcomes.”