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Microsoft AI Businesses Cloud Network The Internet

Walmart Teams Up With Microsoft To Fight Amazon, Netflix (cnn.com) 75

Posted by BeauHD from the two-front-war dept.
Slashdot readers hyperclocker and Hallux-F-Sinister have shared news about Walmart's new strategy to take on Amazon. In a nutshell, Walmart will use more of Microsoft's cloud services and work with the company on AI and machine learning projects. The goal is to reduce its energy consumption and improve its delivery systems. Hyperclocker shares an excerpt from a report: Today, Walmart announced that it has established a strategic partnership with 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." What that means in reality is, Walmart is embracing Microsoft's cloud services and will run its digital operations by taking full advantage of Microsoft Azure and Office 365. The partnership agreement lasts for five years and starts with a team of Walmart and Microsoft engineers working together to transition the retailer to Microsoft's ecosystem. Hallux-F-Sinister provides some commentary: According to CNN Money, Walmart and Microsoft are ganging up on Amazon.com. I found myself wondering if this was more like Lex Luthor teaming up with the Joker to fight Sinestro, or Bruce Wayne letting Tony Stark use the Bat Computer to fight against the thing Richard Pryor's character designed in whichever godawful nineteen eighties-era Superman sequel he was in. The story itself would bore an accountant to tears, I am convinced, so I did not dare read it for fear of being rendered insensate; but here is the URL if you find you are in desperate need of sleep. Perhaps this other bit of news will wake you up: Walmart is also contemplating starting its own streaming service to compete with Amazon and Netflix. According to GeekWire, citing The Information, "Walmart is considering various ways to stand out, including undercutting Amazon and Netflix on price or offering an ad-supported free service."
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Walmart Teams Up With Microsoft To Fight Amazon, Netflix More

Walmart Teams Up With Microsoft To Fight Amazon, Netflix

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  • for people of MicroSoft presented by walmart

  • Really all I read was: "Multi-hundred billion dollar company, joins up with another multi-hundred billion dollar company to go after an different multi-hundred billion dollar company. "

    If you don't mind, I'll just take one of those hundred billions and you guys go to town on each other. You guys won't miss it.

    • MOAR CONTENT (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What absolutely everyone wants from a movie streaming service is a BIG DAMN LIST of movies to watch.

      Every offering available right now has like 20% of what I actually want to see. I think of something I want to watch, I check, and nope, they don't have it. 4 times out of 5.

      The best deal out there, right now, is Netflix's old dvd-by-mail offering. It blows all the streaming offerings away in terms of range of content. Though, sadly, even it has been cut down from what it was during its heyday, with many

      • At least there's cross-licensing. Some TV shows and movies are available on both Prime and Netflix, for example. That said, with Disney trying to move their (substantial) IP to their own streaming service, and newcomers like that nonsense CBS all access, I see the ecosystem fracturing rather than consolidating. The era of Big Three streaming providers of just Netflix, Prime, and Hulu is coming to an end. Sad because by having 2 out of 3, I had everything I could possibly want.

        It's strange that for strea

  • Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thundercattt ( 4205847 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @05:04PM (#56964962)
    I find it funny how Walmart is complaining about Amazon. Walmart came into town, under cut everyone and all the other chains folded up shop. Now Amazon is using the same tactics and Walmart cries fowl. Eat a dick Walmart

    • Re:Hilarious (Score:5, Interesting)

      by known_coward_69 ( 4151743 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @05:27PM (#56965066)

      Amazon isn't cheaper than wal mart. Most of the time Amazon is the same price or more expensive. The nice thing about Amazon is I don't have to waste my time driving or taking the train or walking and standing in line to buy stuff when I could be one of many other things.

      Wal Mart has an online arm called Jet.com which is cheaper than amazon for a lot of things, but a lot more for others. and they have free next day shipping

      • Amazon isn't cheaper than wal mart. Most of the time Amazon is the same price or more expensive. The nice thing about Amazon is I don't have to waste my time driving or taking the train or walking and standing in line to buy stuff when I could be one of many other things.

        The nicest thing about Amazon isn't even not having to travel to a store, it's that once you get "to" Amazon, they actually have what you're looking for. Wal-Mart has what I want maybe literally 2% of the time, and something I will accept maybe 5% of the time. Amazon has the specific product I want better than 95% of the time. This particular factor is what is crushing retail. It's extra-hard for me because I am something of a hippie and also a gigantic mutant, and I need weird sizes and don't buy stuff wit

    • Walmart built their empire on 4% gross margins on most products at every day pricing. They make their employees employees.

      Amazon by contrast uses price manipulation practices which would be considered deceptive in most states while abusing the independent contractor model for laborers.

      Walmart is a terrible company, but Amazon is worse and more internationally malicious.

      • I don't like either, if they go toe to toe and both get bruised I won't complain.

        • I wouldn't really call it "toe to toe". Walmart is way too far behind Amazon in online sales and fulfillment to call it that. They are desperately trying any angle to catch up.

          In terms of market share for ecommerce, Amazon is around 50% and Walmart is around 4% (just behind Apple). In terms of infrastructure and capabilities for ecommerce style fulfillment (e.g. high volume of small orders), Walmart is even further behind. It's a completely different animal than the types of facilities they built to s

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AvitarX ( 172628 )

        Amazon by contrast uses price manipulation practices which would be considered deceptive in most states

        I assume this is part of what the AI referenced in the article is going to be about doing

        It's also kind of sad that Walmart is the kinder employer in this comparison, but I tend to think you're correct.

    • THIS! Walmart can go fuck themselves! They have treated their employees like shit for decades. May they fail miserably.

      • I agree, I hate Walmart. Every time someone partners with Microsoft they end up getting the short end of the shaft. Nokia was a 22 billion experiment and resulted in nothing. I am sure hackers are going to love poking both of these old dinosaurs at will.

    • I find it funny how Walmart is complaining about Amazon. Walmart came into town, under cut everyone and all the other chains folded up shop. Now Amazon is using the same tactics and Walmart cries fowl. Eat a dick Walmart

      But we need competition. If Amazon is the only viable web store and Netflix is the only viable show provider and google is the only viable search engine; then things will get stagnant, expensive, and have lousy costumer service just like the big "neighborhood" telecoms (Comcast, AT&T, et

    • doesn't matter who wins, we lose.

  • Technology vs. Buying (Score:5, Interesting)

    by captaindomon ( 870655 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @05:16PM (#56965016)
    At it's heart, Amazon is a technology company. It's filled with technologists, and the success it has had in retail is, in some ways, a side effect. At it's heart, Walmart is a bulk purchasing company and a real estate company. It is filled with buyers and real estate experts. Microsoft doesn't care about Walmart succeeding in retail, it cares about selling more cloud processing to Walmart, by making things more complicated and AI-driven, requiring more computing power. It's like teaming up with IBM. I shop at Walmart all the time in their brick and mortar stores, but Walmart will never be able to compete with Amazon online, because the experience will be clunky, due to the factors above. Amazon has a very seamless online buying experience, and excellent customer service, and that's what people care about when purchasing things online.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 )

      A big deal of Walmart's success also has to do with sound IT practices. They aren't just a bunch of stupid troglodytes. They eat everyone else's lunch by focusing on what's important in terms of data and not getting distracted by meaningless nonsense.

      Walmart can compete on Amazon's own terms. Their grocery pickup service is a good example of this. Amazon's attempts are sad jokes by comparisons.

      Each "faction" uses tech to it's advantage. It's not as one sided as you want to make it out to be.

      • A big deal of Walmart's success also has to do with sound IT practices.

        But Walmart uses tech to support retail. Amazon makes most of their profit directly from tech. AWS generates most of Amazon's profit. Retailing is just a side business.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Miser ( 36591 )

        Consider this though - they have great data analytics - and a lot of their "stuff" doesn't run on Microsoft ....

        Makes me wonder if old M$ is going to try converting them?

      • A big deal of Walmart's success also has to do with sound IT practices.

        They did do a good job of creating supply chain systems that worked well for supporting their retail stores. The problem is that model is mostly incompatible with ecommerce fulfillment. That's why Walmart is racing to build out it's infrastructure to support ecommerce fulfillment but Amazon has a huge lead.

        Currently, in the US, Amazon has about 114 facilities for ecommerce fulfillment, Walmart has 14 built or in the process of being built. In addition to the raw numbers, it takes time to figure out ho

        • Walmart has the advantage of already having property somewhat suited to the task in virtually every population center in the US. Even in an ordinarily bad scenario, a Walmart closing, it can be converted to a straight up warehouse practically overnight. Amazon had to buy Whole Foods to get that kind of footprint, and even then having a grocery store in every town isn't as good as having a grocery + mega general store in every town.

    • wal mart was big in retail IT before amazon became big. They even pioneered a lot of stuff people now call AI to figure out what people buy.

      wal mart's problem is that they are cheap and don't pay. And too many jobs are in arkansas or some other horrible place where they hate you unless you're a WASP and no starbucks or whole foods.

      • And too many jobs are in arkansas or some other horrible place where they hate you unless you're a WASP and no starbucks or whole foods.

        They also underwent a re-org of their IT some time back which resulted in 4 silos instead of one IT department. This whole effort is probably driven by politics between the silos.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Microsoft doesn't care about Walmart succeeding in retail, it cares about selling more cloud processing to Walmart, by making things more complicated and AI-driven, requiring more computing power.

      Eventually that might be true, but in order to have a cash cow, you first have to grow a cow. Walmart is way behind Amazon in online retailing. MS is known to play the long game (or at least the medium game). Thus, it's in MS's best interest to help Walmart get big enough.

      It's like teaming up with IBM.

      But MS's clou

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Microsoft should stick to windows and Walmart should stick to selling racist t-shirts.

  • Part of a bigger trend... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aaronb1138 ( 2035478 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @05:33PM (#56965090)
    Now that AWS is profitable, every brick and mortar retailer is on there way out of AWS and into GCP and Azure. Walmart made the "stop putting money into a malicious competitor's hands" over a year ago. They're just now done with internal PoCs and such to validate migration plans.

    Nobody really likes doing business with Amazon at the corporate tier because you never know when Jeff is going to decide to consume your market for himself. Bezos need to get a fluffy white cat to complete the Bond villain thing he has going.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by theCoder ( 23772 )

      Nobody really likes doing business with Amazon at the corporate tier because you never know when Jeff is going to decide to consume your market for himself.

      Good point, but hasn't that been Microsoft's modus operandi for many decades? It's not like partnering with Microsoft in the past has often ended up a good thing for the non-Microsoft partner. I suppose for Walmart, Microsoft is probably the lesser of two evils here, but it's still not a great choice.

      • Good point, but hasn't that been Microsoft's modus operandi for many decades?

        Yes, but only in Software. It's not a problem for corporations in other industries, because Microsoft doesn't go into them. (Well, they are dicking around with hardware, but they're not very serious about it...)

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2018 @05:39PM (#56965120)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Amazon is a direct competitor of both Walmart and Microsoft. Walmart on the retail side and MS on the cloud services side. Yes, Walmart's online website sucks but it will get better. If they have proven anything over the years it is that they are tenacious and they know how to make money.

    As near as I can tell, AWS is the only profitable division in Amazon. Everything else loses money and yet their stock price is through the roof. Traditional measures like P/E ratio don't seem to count for much in today's ma

  • I'm surprised not to see Google in this deal. Walmart has been a vital partner to Google in opposing Amazon. There has been no mention of a change in that relationship. If that relationship is still intact, this is a strange menage-a-trois.

    This isn't likely about datacenters. Walmart already has six mega-datacenters that haven't been online very long and many more smaller ones. Walmart is cloud-based and runs its own cloud with something like 80% of operations using their own datacenters. Their data is core

  • Microsoft Bob will be their new door greeter

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Nah, they'll have a phalanx of tiny Microsoft Bobs following you around the store like a posse...

      Posse (in tiny little voices voiced in unison): Wouldn't you like some nice genuine imitation maple syrup? Toilet paper, every one needs toilet, get the industrial size.

      You: Thank you, I'll shop by myself.

      Posse: Ooooo...that's dangerous, an unattended shopper, we're here to help and serve.

      You: No, damnit, let me alone.

      Posse: We believe you'd be happier with a new computer with Microsoft Software.

      You: Dear G-d, m

  • Steps to great new content creation in the USA.

    0. Keep US politics away from any creative product that has to sell globally.
    1. Find some people who really understand US culture. What people enjoy watching. Movies and TV series.
    Vampires and the humans they have adventures with. Billionares doing many things with lots of money. Pirates with big ships and non trivial treasure maps.
    Medical dramas with drama not just more US SJW politics.
    2. Find the best people in the USA who can put the above into writ
  • Walmart + Microsoft. Now there's a match made in Hell.
  • Maybe they will start selling to customers outside of the US

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