Walmart Teams With Microsoft Against Common Amazon EnemyWalmart Teams With Microsoft Against Common Amazon Enemy

Walmart tapped Microsoft as its "preferred and strategic cloud provider," teaming the two companies against their common Amazon enemy in a deal announced Tuesday.

The goal for Walmart in the five-year agreement is to transform its retail business and make shopping faster and easier for its customers using machine learning, AI and other cloud technologies, including Microsoft Azure and Office 365, the two companies said. Walmart is already a Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) cloud customer. (See Walmart Picks Microsoft As 'Preferred and Strategic Cloud Provider'.)

As part of the partnership, Walmart and Microsoft engineers will collaborate on moving hundreds of existing applications to native cloud architectures, including significant parts of the walmart.com and samsclub.com site to Azure.

Walmart will build a global IoT platform on Azure, including connected HVAC and refrigeration units to reduce energy usage, and applying machine learning to routing trucks in the supply chain, the companies said.

Figure 1: Sam Walton's original five and dime, now the Walmart visitor's center, Bentonville, Ark. Photo by Bobak Ha'Eri (CC BY-SA 2.5)