REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 9, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday, Gap
Inc. (NYSE: GPS) announced it has established a strategic
partnership with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) to drive its
digital transformation strategies and continue to create new
customer experiences across all brands, including Old Navy, Gap,
Banana Republic, Athleta, Hill City and Intermix. With Microsoft as
its primary cloud provider, Gap Inc. is focused on technology
innovation, speed and flexibility, using Microsoft Azure and
Microsoft 365 to deploy new business capabilities and work more
efficiently across the organization.
"As we grow our value and active business and accelerate online
and mobile, the ability to scale our technology in a secure
environment to accommodate this growth is critical," said
Sally Gilligan, chief information
officer, Gap Inc. "The Microsoft Azure platform provides our teams
the ability to deliver innovative and personalized capabilities for
our customers with speed supported by a strong depth of technology
expertise from the Microsoft team."
Gap Inc. is working closely with Microsoft to migrate hundreds
of applications to Azure, focusing on a seamless and personalized
experience for customers as they shop across stores, online and
mobile. Initially, the company is moving key inventory, stores and
site capabilities to Azure for trusted, scalable and cost-effective
computing. These critical capabilities support a portfolio of
brands and products available for purchase in more than 90
countries, through multiple channels including over 3,100
company-operated stores. Using the Microsoft Azure
platform-as-a-service offerings, Gap Inc. is accelerating its time
to market for new customer services, empowering customers with
greater flexibility in where and how they want to shop. The
Microsoft Azure cloud supports the company's DevOps model through
which engineers and product management teams rapidly develop,
deploy and test new capabilities.
By building and centralizing its data platform on Azure, Gap
Inc. can now apply advanced analytics and machine learning to gain
a comprehensive understanding of customers across channels, and to
deliver personalized merchandising, marketing and service for all
brands in its portfolio. The company is using Microsoft Power BI to
empower more employees at Gap Inc. to visualize and act on
information to create the best customer experience and drive the
business.
Gap Inc. is also deploying Microsoft 365 solutions to provide
its employees across its brands and functions around the world with
more powerful and creative ways to communicate, collaborate and
share insights with one another.
"Gap Inc. has been a global pioneer and leader in retail since
they opened their first store in San
Francisco in 1969," said Shelley
Bransten, corporate vice president for global retail and
consumer goods at Microsoft. "We are thrilled to partner with them
to further modernize their customer and employee applications, turn
data into dollars, and build powerful new applications and services
that drive digital transformation and put customers at the heart of
their business."
About Gap Inc.
Gap Inc. is a leading global retailer offering clothing,
accessories, and personal care products for men, women, and
children under the Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic, and Athleta
brands. Fiscal year 2017 net sales were $15.9 billion. Gap Inc. products are available
for purchase in more than 90 countries worldwide through
company-operated stores, franchise stores, and e-commerce sites.
For more information, please visit www.gapinc.com.
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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