Yahoo Finance Walmart And Microsoft To Take On Amazon
Microsoft MSFT CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview with the WSJ that the shared rivalry with Amazon AMZN “is absolutely core to this…How do we get more leverage as two organizations that have depth and breadth and investment to be able to outrun our respective competition”.
Microsoft wants to expand its cloud business to compete with Amazon’s AWS, which is how Walmart can help it. And Walmart WMT wants to get on the front of technology to take on Amazon’s online retail platform, which is how Microsoft can help it.
Walmart has a treasure trove of data that it has been trying to analyze to improve customer experience and lower cost. Now, this will be infused with Microsoft machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities as well as its IoT tools to more easily determine things like the most efficient way to stock shelves and optimize the performance of freezers and other equipment.
Walmart will develop cloud native versions of its applications, so cloud-based solutions can be built on top of them to determine purchase intentions and then sharing subsequent sales data with vendors.
The company will gradually move walmart.com and samsclub.com to Azure, which is expected to further improve the customer experience. It has already been using Microsoft’s cloud through its Jet.com acquisition, which standardized on the platform.
It will also gradually deploy Microsoft 365 across its operations.
The agreement likely doesn’t include the use of Microsoft’s just-launched cashier-less store checkout technology, since media reports suggest that it is testing its own version.
Microsoft is also not its only technology ally, because Walmart currently lists its products on Alphabet’s GOOGL online shopping platform Google Express to facilitate voice-based ordering through Google Home that is the closest competition to Amazon’s Alexa-powered devices.
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