Consultancy firm Capgemini today announced a new partnership with cloud computing leader Amazon Web Services which will enable its enterprise customers to benefit from cheaper, greener and more flexible IT services.

Capgemini will launch a Cloud Computing Centre of Excellence which will provide Amazon Web Services experts across the globe to help firms evaluate and implement the offerings, according to Richard Payling, vice president of global outsourcing at Capgemini.

The centre will also provide customers with development, migration and back-up services.

In addition, Capgemini will hold 'discovery days' designed to teach customers about the benefits of cloud computing and how it could transform their business.

"We decided, and so have the analysts, that Amazon is not only the most mature and real cloud, but the most open for the sort of thing we want to do," explained Payling. "You're not constrained by working on a particular development platform like .Net - it's open to everything and anything."

Andrew Gough, cloud business development head at Capgemini, argued that a cloud computing strategy could help the firm's customers become more agile, save on capital expenditure and get more value from their IT investments sooner.

"The ability to scale up to thousands of virtual servers in only the time it takes to transfer the first image and boot is game-changing," he said.

"If you think the typical datacentre is only running at 15 per cent capacity, a lot of people will be moving straight through the idea of virtualisation and into the cloud."