November 15, 2018
Being part of the retail industry can be tricky, even for the biggest market leaders. This has been demonstrated by American retail giant Walmart who have found it necessary to consolidate their power over their retail and commerce competitors by joining forces with tech behemoth Microsoft in an attempt to combat the powerful and influential ecommerce company that we all must be familiar with, Amazon.
But why did Walmart feel the need to do this? It’s all to do with the Cloud. By “the Cloud” we refer to the massive invisible centre of information. One of the most famous uses of the Cloud is the one that is used in Microsoft Azure database, which is the database Walmart plans to use to store its internet business applications. As well as using Microsoft to store its already existing applications, Walmart also plans on developing new business applications through this new alliance using Microsoft’s technical expertise in artificial intelligence and internet of things to create their own chat bots.
Walmart has been pondering this business decision for a while now and in July they had determined that Microsoft was the “preferred and strategic cloud provider”, which makes sense as Microsoft is one of the biggest brands dominating the tech industry so to have their help would surely beat out any competition
However, it is important to consider who they are up against. Amazon rules the ecommerce industry, both the retail aspect and technology aspect too. Amazon.com has been the most popular online store for years now and their ventures into innovative technology such as their Amazon Echo are also extremely popular even though this experimentation is a relatively new entry in Amazon’s achievements.
Amazon’s Web Service feature, or AWS, seems to be the real pressure point Walmart wants to take down, with their keenness to create their own chat bots and their use of Microsoft’s cloud. The AWS is Amazon’s Cloud based service which is relatively underrated, with clients such as National Geographic and Kia, but it seems overshadowed by their Echo and drone projects.
Clearly Walmart have noticed the AWS and its impressive results and feel they have the potential to crack this marketplace and beat out Amazon for Cloud superiority. But can they manage it? Considering the points raised in this article, it will certainly be a close competition as Walmart has Microsoft’s resources at their disposal but AWS does seem unstoppable. Who knows what will happen in this particular battle for Cloud superiority?
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