[July 17, 2018] |
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Walmart establishes strategic partnership with Microsoft to further accelerate digital innovation in retail
Today, Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) announced it is establishing a strategic
partnership with Microsoft (News - Alert) 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 (News - Alert), 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:
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Capitalize on depth and breadth of Microsoft's compute capacity
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Ability to seamlessly manae workloads in an elastic environment
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Leverage expanded access to new toolsets to innovate faster
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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 (News - Alert) at http://facebook.com/Walmart
and on Twitter (News - Alert) 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.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180716005884/en/
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