Walmart, in their competition against their biggest rival Amazon, has thought of getting associated with the company, which is run by the World’s Richest Person, hence it is getting connected with Microsoft.
Walmart has announced that they have established a strategic partnership with Microsoft to accelerate their digital transformation even further in the retail sector, make their associates empowered on a worldwide basis and also make shopping really convenient and lot faster for millions of customers around the world. Walmart is basically making their way towards accepting Microsoft’s cloud services and thereby aim to run their digital operations by making full use of Microsoft Azure as well as Office 365.
This partnership would last for five years and will get started off with the team of engineers from both Microsoft and Walmart working in tandem to let the retailer make a transition towards the ecosystem of Microsoft. Walmart has a number of existing applications that need to get transitioned into Azure, hence the team would have their hands full.
If there is an apprehension as to how deep this partnership can go, that can be easily put to rest as Walmart is totally committed towards building a whole lot of IoT (Internet of Things) operation to run on Azure, which would encompass everything, right from getting the refrigeration units in thousands of stores managed to the use of machine learning in order to improve the entire supply chain of Walmart. Microsoft will make sure that they go as smoothly as possible in their attempt to extend the partnership for more than just the first five years.
There is one area where Amazon is currently ahead of Walmart and that is in case of automated grocery stores and the retail presence which they have in the form of Amazon Go, which will only rise from now on. There is a solution for Microsoft, as they have already begun working on their own automated store software along with their hardware solution. This particular area, with Microsoft’s own store software in an automated basis will be operated in some time, has most certainly helped Walmart take the decision to get associated with Microsoft for a long term.
