New York, Sep 17 : Global professional services company Accenture on Thursday announced the 'Accenture Cloud First group with a $3 billion investment over three years to help clients accelerate their digital transformation. Karthik Narain, who served as the lead for Accenture Technology in North America, will lead the new venture and join the Global Management Committee from October 1. "Accenture Cloud First and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment to delivering greater value to our clients when they need it most. Digital transformation requires cloud at scale, and post-Covid leadership requires that every business become a 'cloud first' business," said Julie Sweet, CEO, Accenture. An industry veteran based in Silicon Valley, Narain helped guide 'Global 2000' brands in using the power of the cloud and other technologies to transform their businesses. Over his 20-year career, he has led many innovative technology programs for clients across a variety of industry sectors, including Software & Platforms, Financial Services and High Tech. 'Accenture Cloud First' is a new multi-service group of 70,000 Cloud professionals. It will bring together the company's industry and technology capabilities, ecosystem partnerships, and deep commitment to learning and upskilling clients' employees and to responsible business, with the focus on enabling organisations to move to the cloud with greater speed and achieve greater value for all their stakeholders at this critical time, the company said in a statement. The $3 billion investment, the company said, will be used to continue advancing industry roadmaps, data models and solutions; cloud AI data and AI architectures; integrated full-stack infrastructure and applications capabilities; cloud tools, assets and automation to drive lower unit cost and innovation; and research and development in edge computing and related cloud technologies. With most businesses currently at only about 20 per cent in the Cloud, moving to 80 per cent or more rapidly and cost effectively is a massive change that requires a bold new model. "Accenture Cloud First, along with our $3 billion investment and our market-leading Software as a Service capabilities in Intelligent Platform Services, ensures that we provide our clients with value, speed and innovation in every part of their Cloud journey," said Paul Daugherty, group chief executive, Accenture Technology. With nearly $11 billion in Cloud revenue in its fiscal year 2019, Accenture said its leadership spans from Software as a Service (SaaS) to its migration, infrastructure and application cloud services. /IANS