Global consulting and service provider HCL Technologies has launched a dedicated Amazon Web Services (AWS) business unit, to help enterprises worldwide accelerate their cloud transformation journeys.

The unit will be supported by AWS’ engineering, solutions and business teams. HCL currently holds five AWS technology competencies, has more than 10,000 professionals trained on AWS products and services, and now plans to boost this capacity to “more than 20,000 specialists”, said the firm.

As well as helping businesses to adopt cloud technologies, the unit will help migrate and manage firms’ SAP workloads on AWS, among other processes.

“HCL is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner capable of providing end-to-end roadmaps for adopting AWS to best serve our mutual customers, with a firm heritage in modernising infrastructure, applications and data,” said Doug Yeum, head of worldwide channels and alliances at AWS.

“With the launch of its AWS business unit, HCL will leverage its vertical-first focus on financial services and insurance, telecoms and energy and utilities, plus deep technical expertise on SAP, contact centres, hybrid cloud and mainframe modernisation to transform businesses,” said Yeum.

“The AWS business unit is an important part of our larger #HCLCloudSmart strategy in servicing every aspect of cloud delivery to build effective ecosystems that help our customers stay ahead of their competitors,” said Kalyan Kumar, chief technology officer and head of ecosystems at HCL Technologies.

This September, Belgian communications service provider Proximus and HCL struck a cloud services agreement that aims to generate new enterprise business through Proximus’ data centres.

HCL is operating and maintaining Proximus’ data centres and supporting the transition of the firm’s enterprise business unit to be a provider of hybrid cloud solutions from the likes of AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.