Capgemini's Cloud Computing Center of Excellence will initially have a team of Amazon Web Services-trained professionals located in North America, Europe and India to help clients evaluate and implement Amazon's current offering; this will evolve as other provider's cloud computing capabilities mature. The centre will also offer Cloud Consulting, Development, Migration and Back-up Services.

Under the right circumstances, leveraging the fast developing cloud computing market has the potential to create significant value for enterprise customers in terms of scale, flexibility, reducing time to market, environmental efficiency and given the economic climate, perhaps the most important feature of reduced capital expenditure.

Capgemini's new Cloud Computing Center of Excellence will initially focus on three enterprise use cases:

Microsoft Sharepoint in the cloud, Oracle ERP in the cloud, and Application Development and Testing in the cloud. Capgemini has so far conducted successful pilots of cloud computing capability for all three use cases on the

Amazon Web Services platform.

In order to help enterprise customers understand cloud computing and define relevant business opportunities,

Capgemini will be offering cloud computing workshops built around its tried and tested Accelerated Solutions

Environment (ASE) methodology.

"We want every business to understand the benefits of cloud computing and the mature services that Amazon Web

Service delivers - that they can save money without giving up speed, reliability, flexibility, and performance - and to be able to get up and running with our services quickly and easily", stated Adam Selipsky, Vice President of Product Management and Developer Relations for Amazon Web Services. "Collaborating with Capgemini to help them

offer their enterprise clients the benefits of cloud computing through Amazon Web Services helps us achieve this

goal."

"This is a ground-breaking partnership that clearly demonstrates Capgemini's strategy to always support its

clients' transformation with the most efficient innovations in the market", stated Paul Spence, Head of Outsourcing,

Capgemini. "The benefits of the Capgemini Cloud capability will be particularly relevant in today's economic

climate and we want our clients to be able to take advantage of early providers such as Amazon Web Services."