Google's answer to Microsoft Office just got a huge vote of confidence from tech consulting giant Accenture

Google Amit Singh

(Business Insider/Julie Bort)
President, Google At Work, Amit Singh

A company that sprang to life in 2007 helping businesses install Google Apps just got bought by one of the 100-pound gorillas in the consulting world, Accenture.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed but we expect this was a good exit for Cloud Sherpas, which had more than 1,100 employees and had raised more than $63 million in venture investment.

Cloud Sherpas helps companies move from traditional software to cloud-only alternatives, and it made its name helping companies move from Microsoft Office to Google Apps (now called Google for Work), earning an award from Google as the best Google for Work Partner four times.

It then started helping companies implement Salesforce and ServiceNow products, earning high status as partners from both of those companies.

You might not know Accenture if you're not familiar with enterprise tech, but it's a huge and influential companies — other big companies and government agencies often hire Accenture to help set up and run their computer systems, and the company has more than 300,000 employees and earned about $3 billion on $31 billion in sales last year.

Accenture will be using Cloud Sherpas to launch a new cloud business practice called the Accenture Cloud First Applications team.

This team will help companies roll out cloud-only services including Google for Work, NetSuite, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday, and so on. Companies are stampeding into the cloud these days, and these newer apps are taking the place of software from old enterprise giants like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP — particularly at young companies.

Google sees this exit as a big validation for Google's ability to build a big ecosystem of partners to sell and support its enterprise products. That's a relatively new phenom for the search giant.

Google for Work president Amit Singh emailed us this statement about the deal:

We’ve always believed the cloud can be transformative for any business, and Accenture’s move to combine Cloud Sherpas with its substantial cloud business validates this, and shows further proof of Google’s incredible momentum in this market.

And a Google spokesperson told us, "It's amazing credibility for cloud services in enterprise. We believe it also shows our Google for Work Partner Program business model can create a self-sustaining industry for startups creating businesses around it."

Accenture, for its part, seems just as excited about Cloud Sherpas' standing as a top-tier partner with Salesforce. Accenture is also a major Salesforce partner — so in that space, it just bought one of its biggest competitors.

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