Walmart establishes strategic partnership with Microsoft to further accelerate digital innovation in retail
July 17 2018 - 12:01AM
Business Wire
Five-year agreement will leverage a broad base
of cloud, AI and IoT solutions for enterprise-wide use
Today, Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) announced it is establishing a
strategic partnership with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq “MSFT”
@microsoft) to further accelerate Walmart’s digital transformation
in retail, empower its associates worldwide and make shopping
faster and easier for millions of customers around the world.
Through this partnership, Walmart has chosen Microsoft as its
preferred and strategic cloud provider tapping into the full range
of Microsoft’s cloud solutions.
“Walmart’s commitment to technology is centered around creating
incredibly convenient ways for customers to shop and empowering
associates to do their best work,” said Doug McMillon, Walmart CEO.
“Walmart is a people led, tech empowered company, and we’re excited
about what this technology partnership will bring for our customers
and associates. Whether it’s combined with our agile cloud platform
or leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to work
smarter, we believe Microsoft will be a strong partner in driving
our ability to innovate even further and faster.”
“Walmart is a pioneering retailer, committed to empowering its
employees and delivering the best experience for its customers
wherever they are,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “The
world’s leading companies run on our cloud, and I’m thrilled to
partner with Walmart to accelerate their digital transformation
with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365.”
Walmart is already using Microsoft services for critical
applications and workloads and is now embarking on a broad set of
cloud innovation projects that leverage machine learning,
artificial intelligence, and data platform solutions for a wide
range of external customer-facing services and internal business
applications. The flexible, secure and rapidly scalable global
technology will significantly accelerate Walmart’s ability to
execute in three key areas:
Digital transformation: The investment in Microsoft Azure
is a continuation of Walmart’s cloud journey and extends across
Walmart’s family of brands and international businesses – allowing
them to leverage Microsoft’s public cloud to:
- Capitalize on depth and breadth of
Microsoft’s compute capacity
- Ability to seamlessly manage workloads
in an elastic environment
- Leverage expanded access to new
toolsets to innovate faster
- Drive a more cloud native environment
and therefore continue to manage cost
In a five-year agreement, Walmart has selected the full range of
Microsoft cloud solutions, including Microsoft Azure and Microsoft
365 for enterprise-wide use to help standardize across the
company’s family of brands. As part of the partnership, Walmart and
Microsoft engineers will collaborate on the assessment,
development, and support phase of moving hundreds of existing
applications to cloud native architectures. For example, to grow
and enhance the online experience, the company will migrate a
significant portion of walmart.com and samsclub.com to Azure,
including its cloud-powered check-out enabling Walmart to grow with
rising customer demand and reach more global markets than ever
before.
Innovation: Whether it’s a continued focus on site
availability and speed, or the ability to quickly and seamlessly
launch new features, customers will continue to see Walmart
innovating to save them time and money across the shopping journey.
There are also massive benefits to operating at scale as Walmart
builds a global IoT platform on Azure – from connected HVAC and
refrigeration units to reduce energy usage in thousands of U.S.
stores or applying machine learning when routing thousands of
trucks in the supply chain.
Changing how we work: Walmart continues to foster a
curious, collaborative, accountable, and agile culture to position
the company for further growth. To do that, it’s critical to have
tools that encourage those skills and traits. Through this
partnership, Walmart is investing in its people with a phased
rollout of Microsoft 365 providing associates with the productivity
tools to foster a culture of collaboration, creativity and
communication. Microsoft’s modern workplace platform supports
connected teams and breaks down silos – with access to a full range
of tools including Microsoft Workplace Analytics, Microsoft Stream,
and Microsoft OneDrive, Walmart associates will have access to
leading collaboration, productivity and sharing tools so they can
save time and work better.
About Walmart
Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) helps people around the world save
money and live better - anytime and anywhere - in retail stores,
online, and through their mobile devices. Each week, nearly 270
million customers and members visit our more than 11,700 stores
under 65 banners in 28 countries and eCommerce websites. With
fiscal year 2018 revenue of $500.3 billion, Walmart employs
approximately 2.3 million associates worldwide. Walmart continues
to be a leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy and
employment opportunity. Additional information about Walmart can be
found by http://corporate.Walmart.com, on Facebook at
http://facebook.com/Walmart and on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/Walmart.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital
transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an
intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every
organization on the planet to achieve more.
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WalmartKatie Roberts, 1-800-331-0085
(U.S.)news.walmart.com/reporterorMicrosoftWE Communications
for Microsoft425-638-7777rrt@we-worldwide.com
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