Apple welcomes Accenture to join IBM, Deloitte, SAP and Cisco in its enterprise partner club

Accenture is the latest technology company to be admitted to Apple's exclusive club of enterprise heavyhitters, joining Deloitte, IBM, SAP and Cisco.

The consultancy giant will open an iOS practice within Accenture Digital Studios, aiming to help businesses migrate legacy applications and data to modern iOS apps.

Accenture will bring its systems integration expertise to help clients connect back-end systems to iOS as well as with software from the likes of SAP and Cisco.

Apple experts will be co-located with the Accenture Digital Studios team, including visual and experience designers, programmers, data architects and scientists, and hardware and software designers.

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said: “Both Apple and Accenture are leaders in building incredible user experiences and together we can continue to truly modernise how businesses work through amazing solutions that take advantage of the incredible capabilities of Apple’s technologies."

Accenture chairman and chief executive Pierre Nanterme called iOS "the superior mobile platform for businesses".

"By combining Accenture’s vast digital capabilities and industry expertise with Apple’s market leadership in creating products that delight customers, we are in a perfect position to help our clients transform the way they work," Nanterme said.

Apple struck its first enterprise partnership with IBM in 2014, followed by Cisco in 2015, followed followed by SAP and the later Deloitte in 2016.