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Accenture and Telstra, the largest internet provider in Australia, are launching a joint venture to support the latter company’s IT modernization push.

Accenture will have a 60% stake in the new organization while Telstra is set to receive the remaining 40%. According to the companies, the joint venture will focus primarily on upgrading the internet provider’s data analytics and AI systems.

One priority of the new organization’s work with Telstra will be “modernising its data and AI platforms.” In the IT world, modernization initiatives can have several goals. Often, such projects focus on moving a company’s on-premises workloads to the cloud so as to simplify infrastructure maintenance. In other cases, the company might wish to replace a legacy or custom application with a more modern product.

Accenture said that the joint venture will also build “specialised AI tools” for Telstra. Many large enterprises are developing custom AI models, or customized versions of existing models, as part of their machine learning projects. This customization allows the models to provide better, more consistent output quality than an off-the-shelf neural network. 

“We’ve made strong progress on our AI goals and already have hundreds of value-driving AI use-cases across the business,” commented Telstra CEO Vicki Brady. “This includes generative AI tools built in-house, like AskTelstra and One Sentence Summary, which are helping our people support customers more effectively and efficiently.”

A third focus of the initiative will be providing AI and data training to Telstra employees. The internet provider has more than 30,000 workers, which means this part of the project could be fairly broad in scope. 

The joint venture will include employees from both Accenture and Telstra, including the latter company’s core data analytics and AI teams. Notably, those teams will have the option to rejoin Telstra after several seven years. The internet provider said that it will consult with its employees before spinning up the joint venture. 

The initiative is part of a broader push on Telstra’s part to simplify its IT operations. Until recently, the carrier relied on no fewer than 18 third-party vendors to support its data analytics and AI systems. Telstra is moving to reduce that number to just two: the joint venture with Accenture and a separate joint venture it formed in 2023 with Quantium, an Australian data analytics consultancy.

Telstra previously carried out a similar overhaul of its software engineering and IT groups. As part of that initiative, the company consolidated more than 400 third-party vendors to just two.

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