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Walmart to Vendors: Get Off Amazon's Cloud (wsj.com)

Posted by msmash on from the tussle-continues dept.

Amazon vs. Walmart saga continues. It turns out, Walmart isn't thrilled about its partners using Amazon's cloud, and it's telling them to get off it (alternative source). From a report: Walmart is telling some technology companies that if they want its business, they can't run applications for the retailer on Amazon's leading cloud-computing service, Amazon Web Services, several tech companies say. [...] Walmart, loath to give any business to Amazon, said it keeps most of its data on its own servers and uses services from emerging AWS competitors, such as Microsoft's Azure.

173 comments

  1. Shock Horror! by hackel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Huh, Walmart is being a complete monopolistic dick? Sure didn't see that one coming...

    1. Re:Shock Horror! by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Before anyone starts ranting that Walmart is not a monopoly, there are two kinds of monopolies. Horizontal where the company controls a particular step of the process across the entire market, and vertical, where the company controls every aspect from beginning to end as much as possible and dictates all aspects of everything that the company deals with.

      Walmart would be an example of a vertically-integrated monopoly in this sense. Perhaps not as naturally-so as, say, a steelworks from the late 19th and early 20th century where the company owned everything from the mining-claim to the trucks delivering fabricated parts to customers, but Walmart dictates terms to manufacturers moreso than just about any retail middleman had before, and continues the monolithic control all of the way from the importation process up through the cash register.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    2. Re:Shock Horror! by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No!!! This is not about it being a monopoly; if anything, this is about Wal-Mart as monopsony, a single buyer. It's different.

      --
      The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
    3. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Walmart is a dinosaur. It is quickly going the way of the dinosaur in part because of the draconian nature of its power players, grappling with retaining their cash cow instead of doing what a REAL business - in a market economy - does...innovate. Those same, creativity stricken, power players would even be unable to work in a real 9-5 job. Sadly that is the case for most of that echelon.

    4. Re:Shock Horror! by voislav98 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Amazon just bought Whole Foods, making it a direct competitor to Walmart. So, Walmart is being sensible. They are saying they don't want any of their data on a competitor's server. Using a car analogy, it's like Toyota saying to their suppliers they don't want their data stored in the GM Cloud Service. There are no guarantees that Amazon would not snoop on the data, no matter how walled off the service is from the rest of the company. This is quite common in the industry, the suppliers are still free to do whatever they want with their own data, but they must follow directions from the customer regarding customer data. So before crying monopoly, consider whether any company would freely hand over their data for storage to a competitor.

    5. Re: Shock Horror! by SteveHulett · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Right on! Walmart is now the Kmart of this generation. Once a powerhouse, they refuse to change with the times and are going to be blown away by the competition that uses better ideas rather than monopolistic control. I watched Walmart overcome Kmart almost over nite because Kmart refused to change a thing about their business model when Walmart was better. This resulted in Walmart devastating Kmart. Amazon is now doing that to Walmart, and they are going to lose to the better idea.

    6. Re:Shock Horror! by Falconnan · · Score: 1

      Sensible from a security standpoint, sure, but they are essentially limiting their pool of potential vendors. Walmart is no longer the beast it was, and Amazon is growing. If you were a vendor, which horse would you back? Choices: One that was strong, but is getting old and cranky, or the younger, fitter horse that's already working for you?

    7. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, they're not being monopolistic. They don't say you must run on X, but they are telling you to not run on their competitor's platform.

      This sounds like the ghost of Sam Walton has been resurrected.

    8. Re:Shock Horror! by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      Amazon just bought Whole Foods, making it a direct competitor to Walmart

      While both sell food, I wouldn't call them competitors.

      Amazon is a competitor to Walmart because of what they already sell, they both are one stop "shops" for "everything". Amazon has a better selection, Walmart is within 15 minutes drive. It has nothing to do with Walmart worrying that people will go to Amazon to buy organic whole earth GMO-free quinoa - just read the outright snobbery in one of the other threads about Whole Foods, those are not people who'll be caught dead in Walmart.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    9. Re: Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Once a powerhouse, they refuse to change with the times and are going to be blown away by the competition that uses better ideas rather than monopolistic control.

      It's not monopolistic to want to deny company secrets to your competition. In many competitive markets, that's about the only thing keeping you from bankruptcy. I know it's fun to bash Walmart, but you'd do the same thing if you owned a business. So stop with the immature crap already.

      Amazon is now doing that to Walmart, and they are going to lose to the better idea.

      Walmart, and any other brick and mortar store for that matter, isn't about to go the way of the dodo. Yes, there will be a reduction in their on-premises offerings, (which is dumb, why else would you drive there if they don't have what you want 9 times out of 10, but try explaining that to their management....), but they won't disappear completely. The waiting times for shipping, (yes if you live outside of a major city, you don't get same day delivery.), the inability to inspect what you buy, etc. will insure that local stores will be around for a good while longer. (At least until we get something like a 3D printer that can make food. (A.K.A. StarTrek's replicator.))

    10. Re:Shock Horror! by Insanity+Defense · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is quite common in the industry, the suppliers are still free to do whatever they want with their own data, but they must follow directions from the customer regarding customer data.

      Strange. I'm a customer yet companies are allowed to do whatever they like (against my will) with MY DATA.

    11. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amazon just bought Whole Foods, making it a direct competitor to Walmart.

      I burst out laughing when I read that. :-)

    12. Re:Shock Horror! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      vertical, where the company controls every aspect from beginning to end as much as possible and dictates all aspects of everything that the company deals with.

      No. Horizontal integration can make you a monopoly. Vertical integration does not, unless you horizontally dominate at least one of the layers. Having dominating power over suppliers is not a monopoly, it is a monopsony.

    13. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      in theory you can stop that by refusing to do business with them, just like Walmart can refuse to do business with a given supplier. In practice it just means you get to choose which company has the opportunity to (ab)use your data.

    14. Re:Shock Horror! by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 1

      Except we're talking about cloud computing. If your services are limited to Amazon's cloud, that is a serious problem.

    15. Re:Shock Horror! by swillden · · Score: 2, Informative

      Before anyone starts ranting that Walmart is not a monopoly, there are two kinds of monopolies. Horizontal where the company controls a particular step of the process across the entire market, and vertical, where the company controls every aspect from beginning to end as much as possible and dictates all aspects of everything that the company deals with.

      Poppycock.

      The notion of a vertical monopoly does exist, but it's used to describe a monopoly (controller of nearly 100% of a market) that achieved its monopoly status through vertical integration. It is not the case that any vertically-integrated company is a monopoly, even if they have achieved total vertical integration. As long as there is still substantial competition at each level in the supply chain, it isn't a monopoly in any of them. If competition has effectively been eliminated at any level in the supply chain, then the company is a monopoly at that level regardless of how integrated they are at other levels.

      Wal-mart might well be a regional monopoly, in the sense that there are regions of the country where they have driven all competing retailers out of business, but they're not a monopoly in general. And it's further possible that they'll eventually leverage vertical integration to become a general monopoly. But they're not now.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    16. Re:Shock Horror! by b0bby · · Score: 1

      Strange. I'm a customer yet companies are allowed to do whatever they like (against my will) with MY DATA.

      If you were single handedly buying 75% of what they were selling, you could probably dictate the terms under which your data was to be used or stored.

    17. Re: Shock Horror! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The history of how Walmart crushed Kmart and other competitors is interesting. Walmart was very innovative, and used technology to streamline their supply chain, cut shrinkage, avoid surplus inventory, etc. This let them cut prices below what their competitors could charge.

      They also used tech to forecast demand and improve sales-per-customer. Before Walmart, a department store would have a "men's accessories" section with ties, belts, socks, etc. But then Walmart scrutinized checkout data and make the SHOCKING discovery that people don't buy ties, belts, and socks together. They buy ties with shirts, belts with pants, and socks with shoes. Who would have guessed? So Walmart reconfigured their sales floors to put the belts next to the pants, the ties next to the dress shirts, and the socks near the shoes. The result? Increased sales.

    18. Re:Shock Horror! by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Sure... not monopolistic. They can dictate to their suppliers. They have already been doing this for years. This is just more of the same.

      They can bend everyone else over and have their way with them but "they're not a monopoly". Suuuure.

      Not that Amazon is much better.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    19. Re:Shock Horror! by Dan+East · · Score: 2

      Walmart dictates terms to manufacturers moreso than just about any retail middleman had before, and continues the monolithic control all of the way from the importation process up through the cash register.

      Walmart still pales in comparison to Sears at its peak. In 1960 one in three Americans had a Sears credit card. 1 in every 200 workers in the country worked for Sears. In 1974 they built the tallest building in the world at the time. They literally sold mail-order houses, and of course every single item that you could ever need to put inside that house, including the appliances themselves, which were manufactured under the brands Sears owned. Farmers could order parts for their tractors from Sears.

      Walmart merely has the ability to say "We will sell your product if you provide it to us at this price"... but doesn't every other retailer have the ability to say the same thing? The fact that Walmart would then order such a vast quantity of them to make an extremely low profit margin appealing to a manufacturer is just the leverage they have because of their size. The manufacturer can still say no if they want to, or if they feel that is in their best business interests.

      Regardless, Walmart does not have the clout Sears had at its peak - Sears was vastly more disturbing in many, many ways with their vertical monopoly, and we can see how that eventually worked out for them down the road.

      --
      Better known as 318230.
    20. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a cock-fight! Dick v. Dick, the way it used to be, while all our jobs are cannibalized and the Dicks fight it out and ream us out.

    21. Re: Shock Horror! by Quirkz · · Score: 2

      Odd. I don't think ever in my life I've bought shoes at the same time as socks. For that matter, I almost never buy shoes from the same kind of store that I'd buy my socks from. And I pick up belts when they wear out, not when I get new pants. Maybe I'm weird?

      I could at least see matching a tie with a shirt.

      Of course I never buy shoes, belts, and a tie together, so there's definitely no value in lumping those three items. I just still have to question the value of this particular insight, particularly compared to something like reduced shrinkage.

      --
      The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
    22. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Using a car analogy, it's like Toyota saying to their suppliers they don't want their data stored in the GM Cloud Service. And oh, BTW, Goodyear, you are not allowed to store your data in the GM Cloud either, or else we will look elsewhere for a tire supplier.

      FTFY.

    23. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GET A FUCKING GRIP, EH?

      let's rephrase what's going on:

      walmart outsources some I.T. makes sense. northwest arkansas isn't exactly bursting at the borders with tech talent, and who the fuck would want to move there, taking a monster pay cut (even compared to the lowered cost of living) in the process.

      walmart doesn't want ITS OWN DATA STORED ON A COMPETITOR'S (i.e. amazon) SERVER, so.. they're telling their TECH VENDORS to get the fuck off amazon's cloud if they want to retain walmart's business.

      this has NOTHING TO DO with nabisco, kraft, coca-cola, con agra, dean foods, p&g, and all the rest of the manufacturers and wholesalers that fill up their store shelves.. just the tech vendors they outsource IT stuff to.

      (must be a fucking, god damn trump voter.. already reading the few words in a headline you want to hear and ignoring everything else. fuck off).

    24. Re: Shock Horror! by mspohr · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      You are a special snowflake. A true rebel who refuses to follow the crowd. An iconoclast among iconoclasts. Imagine, refusing to buy a new belt to go with those new pants. It's a radical idea and you are in the forefront of trendiness.
      We salute you!

      --
      I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    25. Re:Shock Horror! by mspohr · · Score: 2

      I wouldn't be caught dead at Walmart... or Whole Foods.
      They are both manipulative, corrupt retailers (each in their own way).

      --
      I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    26. Re: Shock Horror! by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Walmart is on track to become Kmart but they're not there yet. If Walmart did the right things they could crush Amazon.

      They opensourced their cloud tools. They have a supply chain management that Amazon wishes it had.

    27. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You know that Amazon has services in their offerings that their competitors don't, right?

      It's very possible for a manufacturer to have built something that is dependent on one of the AWS services that doesn't exist on Azure, and now that Walmart is throwing a hissy fit, they have to completely rearchitect an information system that may run perfectly, and may have been running for months / years?

      This is petty and petulant on the part of Walmart. This isn't about 'we don't want our competitor to have sensitive data' - anything sensitive should be encrypted at rest anyway if the manufacturer's IT staff isn't completely retarded. This is Walmart trying to stick it to Amazon while also sticking it to their suppliers yet again.

    28. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Except we're talking about butt computing. If your services are limited to Amazon's butt, that is a serious problem."

      I love the cloud to butt plugin. Makes these conversations sooo much better.

    29. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's next, Walmart's employment agreement prohibiting Netflix? There is a limit.

      (Netflix run a lot of their stuff on AWS).

      Think about that. Netflix, who have head-on competition from Amazon Video, also run their core systems on AWS.

      That's how off-base you are with "There are no guarantees that Amazon would not snoop on the data, no matter how walled off the service is from the rest of the company.". There absolutely is.

    30. Re: Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I just still have to question the value of this particular insight, particularly compared to something like reduced shrinkage."

      You will realize the value when you notice the reduced shrinkage pills next to the condoms in the checkout line.

    31. Re: Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where do you think all the Kmart execs go when they quit..

    32. Re: Shock Horror! by Jodka · · Score: 1

      The history of how Walmart crushed Kmart and other competitors is interesting....

      Well Sears was the largest retailer in the United States until October 1989 when it was surpassed by Walmart. Amazon is now twice the size of Walmart.

      It speaks to the powerful intransigence of entrenched management culture that companies worth hundreds of billions of dollars fail while others grow to replace them, as opposed to substituting in better executives with the same strategies as their winning competitors. The real infrastructure loss and financial loss to investors is enormous compared to the price of hiring better executives. There is a massive inefficiency here.

      --
      Ceci n'est pas une signature.
    33. Re: Shock Horror! by aaronb1138 · · Score: 1

      Amazon Prime Video is not as much a direct competitor to Netflix as you are trying to represent. Prime Video is a knockoff geared towards upselling. It's primary purpose isn't to be a streaming video platform, it's a false flag freebie for people who want fast shipping free.

      Once you understand this, it's easy to see why Prime Video's UI is so atrocious and slow on most platforms. It's the afterthought.

    34. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sears at its peak was weaker than Walmart is today. 1 in 100 workers in the US works for Walmart, twice the ratio of Sears' peak. 1 in 3 Americans make more than half their retail purchases at Walmart (excluding vehicles).

      Walmart today has few competitors, which means a few retailers have much greater influence over suppliers than in Sears' heydey.

    35. Re: Shock Horror! by Cederic · · Score: 1

      Nah, I'm with him. Never bought socks at the same time as shoes.

      When I buy trousers, I use an existing belt. If I need a belt, I buy a belt, I don't buy trousers to go with them.

      But.. women. A lot of mens clothing is bought by women. They're all about coordination and matching shit.

      This is why ties sell with shirts, and why I can believe belts get sold with trousers.

      Walmart's identified trends are at a population level, and even if it's only a 1-2% change in purchasing behaviour that's worth shifting where you display your socks.

    36. Re:Shock Horror! by Cederic · · Score: 1

      It's petty by Walmart but that doesn't excuse designing a system that isn't transferable to other hosting services.

      Amazon do offer some great accelerators but you don't have to use them. I'd rather have the flexibility to shift to Azure or another cloud services provider, and use that flexibility to manage my own costs.

      It'd also make the Walmart conversation very easy. "Stop using AWS." "ok, done."

      Just switch back again afterwards, unless Walmart are going to dicate in their supplier contracts how supplier IT services must be provided, in which case I'm just going to avoid them.

    37. Re: Shock Horror! by Cederic · · Score: 1

      And yet.. it's good enough that I halted my netflix subscription because of it.

      It doesn't need to compete on equal terms, the fact that I get Amazon Prime Video and free delivery and some other shit for less than the cost of Netflix makes it an easy choice, and also means I can save money on the Netflix subscription.

      If I ditch the £70/month premium TV service (very close to doing that) then I'll want Netflix and Amazon. The problem is that neither of them offer the thing I really want: Films and live sport.

    38. Re: Shock Horror! by Dross50 · · Score: 1

      I've been following Walmart before it was cool to follow Walmart. They did big data before it was called big data. I used to know a retired VP of Walmart. My favorite Walmart story, is they discovered that sales of Twinkies and Beer went through the roof when an area was threaten by a Hurricane, down south. Seems the Southerns can survive anything if they have an adequate supply of Twinkies and Beer. If you think about it, entirely logical. Beer for if the water supply is compromised. And Twinkies never go bad. Just the combination is yuk. I'd go more with Slim Jims myself. Is the Walmart model finished? I don't think so, I've traveled to some pretty rural areas and in many places, you shop Walmart or you don't shop at all. This is an interesting story about Vlasic Pickles and Walmart. Do business with Walmart at your peril. Ohbytheway, Sears invented that model. https://www.fastcompany.com/47...

    39. Re: Shock Horror! by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

      "Prime Video is a knockoff geared towards upselling. It's primary purpose isn't to be a streaming video platform, it's a false flag freebie for people who want fast shipping free."

      Prime free shipping is available in like 6 countries.

      Prime video is available about 100.

      Something doesn't compute.

    40. Re: Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "There are no guarantees that Amazon would not snoop on the data, no matter how walled off the service is from the rest of the company."

      How can you be sure that there aren't guarantees? It is possible to be HIPAA-compliant and run solely on AWS (see https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/hipaa-compliance/). If that is possible, it is probably possible to get a guarantee (or contract/addendum) from Amazon that AWS won't disclose data to Amazon.

      Although from what I've heard that would just be a waste of time (as it is apparently basically impossible for non-AWS employees, and AWS employees who access customer data (the very small subset of AWS employees who have access) without a valid (legal) authorization will apparently be easily found and will apparently most likely have to seek new employment in a different field).

    41. Re: Shock Horror! by athenaprime · · Score: 1
      Dunno if I'd call it "innovative" to build your reputation under the "everything made in USA" banner and then bring it all in from China, or how "innovative" it is to bully local gubmints into giving you tax abatements for decades, build your utility infrastructure out for you at cost, and undercut every local business in a 25-mile radius based on the promise of "jerbz" that don't even pay enough to keep your employees off the dole.

      Also, Walmart keeps "reconfiguring the sales floor" to include less and less actual stuff. and more empty shelving, because who cares--you're too poor to shop somewhere else and there's nowhere else to go anyway. At least out here in the sticks.

    42. Re:Shock Horror! by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

      Walmart is just another store in major urban areas when they bother to show up at all. Here in Boston, for example, they have stores in the suburbs that duke it out with Target and zero presence in the city itself. But Walmart really is a monopoly in rural America; there are many places where you can live where there is no viable alternative to shopping there. Until Amazon came along.

      That is why Walmart is so afraid of Amazon. It's pretty much impossible for another retailer to compete with Walmart in the small markets that they dominate; there isn't enough business to go around to support another big store like them, and Walmart has more economies of scale (and importantly, clout with suppliers). But Amazon is using a different model. One that makes it possible for them to be a viable competitor for Walmart, because they don't need to have scale in the local market to enter and compete.

    43. Re: Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks Professor. Cliffy Clavin!

    44. Re: Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And thus made everything impossible to find by itself, because nothing in stores is laid out in a "logical" order. It is all laid-out to increase sales.

    45. Re: Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except Walmarts website offers pretty good prices... they often beat Amazon

    46. Re:Shock Horror! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are no guarantees that Amazon would not snoop on the data, no matter how walled off the service is from the rest of the company. This is quite common in the industry,

      Yep this is why you should never use cloud services. There is something to be said about owning your own servers and having your own network. Personally I don't keep anything in the so called "cloud" that I wouldn't post on my web site for all the world to see.

      Also why I will never use Windows10.

    47. Re:Shock Horror! by Tamerlin · · Score: 1

      One monopolistic dick sticking it to another...

  2. Fuck Walmart by drew_92123 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I avoid them if at all possible... Amazon gets a fair amount of my business as do local businesses, but Walmart can go fuck themselves...

    1. Re:Fuck Walmart by known_coward_69 · · Score: 2

      i buy next to nothing from amazon and buy water and snacks and other household stuff from jet.com which is wal mart

      free shipping i don't have to pay $100 a year for

    2. Re: Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately you're gonna have to pay to finish that sentence.

    3. Re: Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was just about to say the exact same thing: Wal-Mart can go fuck itself.

    4. Re:Fuck Walmart by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 0

      Washington state and home of Amazon

      We have to pay tax's using Amazon, so I don't mess with them.

      As for Walmart, I have three Walmart super stores within 8.5 miles of me :)

    5. Re:Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't you have to pay the same taxes when you buy at the nearby WalMarts?

    6. Re:Fuck Walmart by SirSlud · · Score: 1

      Lead infused water by the sound of it.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    7. Re: Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Amazon has to charge tax on any purchase that occurs in a state they have a business presence in. Now that Amazon has gone full-out on same day deliveries they pretty much have a warehouse in every major city or region. Thus we're all paying taxes regardless. It's not like it was 5 years ago when Amazon just had a few major warehouses and you could evade sales tax coming out of state.

    8. Re:Fuck Walmart by known_coward_69 · · Score: 1

      better yet, it's my wife's snobby alkaline water that costs a lot more at whole foods and local stores. they even have some ridiculous dairy free chocolate spread she likes

    9. Re:Fuck Walmart by Desler · · Score: 2

      free shipping i don't have to pay $100 a year for

      "Free" shipping? You're joking, right? The cost of shipping is baked into the price of what you're buying.

    10. Re:Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Amazon isn't much different than walmart, for instance have you tried running Amazon Prime videos on a chromcast? Amazon views it as a competitor and so refuses to support it, and then even decided to pull it from their store. even though all their own products are Fire OS which is based on android. so it isn't because they don't know how to interface with Google's tech.

    11. Re:Fuck Walmart by known_coward_69 · · Score: 1

      yeah, and it's still cheaper than Prime items on amazon, cheaper than paying amazon $99 a year for shipping and cheaper than the local stores

    12. Re:Fuck Walmart by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      Amazon does free shipping too. Prime is for unlimited two day shipping (plus no minimums, a Netflix style video service, a cut down Rhapsody type music service, and quite a few other benefits.)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    13. Re: Fuck Walmart by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      covfefe

    14. Re:Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, around here I think the tax is higher at the brick-and-mortar thanks to a county surtax on top of the state tax.

      Then again, if taxes make that big a dent in your life, you're not nearly as rich as you think. And you're not going to get any richer by shopping at Wal-Mart or Amazon. Unless you have a few centuries at your disposal, saving 10% or so on everything you buy isn't going to make you a millionaire. There are many ways to get rich, but nickle-and-dime stuff isn't it.

    15. Re:Fuck Walmart by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      The total cost is what matters in the end. Doesn't matter what that is.

      Although depending on the item, you can recover your "free shipping membership" on a single purchase alone.

      Amazon has merely eliminated the games most mail order retailers play with "shipping and handling".

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    16. Re:Fuck Walmart by WolfgangVL · · Score: 1

      Jet fails the Arizona test, just like every other online grocery vendor I've found.

      24 pack of 24oz cans, labeled .99 on the can- costs 26 bucks+tax

      I'll stick with supersaver.

      --
      You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
    17. Re:Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The total cost is what matters in the end. Doesn't matter what that is.

      Although depending on the item, you can recover your "free shipping membership" on a single purchase alone.

      Amazon has merely eliminated the games most mail order retailers play with "shipping and handling".

      That is why I only had Prime for when I moved into my new house. In that first year the unlimited shipping allowed me to get quite a lot more than I would have been able to for the same budget, but once I was don't furnishing and decorating I didn't renew, that and it was right before they upped it to $99.

      Never found their video service useful back then, especially as they still wanted you to pay more on top of the Prime free for most of the shows and movies.

    18. Re:Fuck Walmart by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1

      ... a Netflix style video service ...

      Not really.

      While I'm not a fan of the direction Netflix is going, they do offer their entire catalog to their customers for one flat fee. On the other hand Amazon, for many popular shows, offers a few episodes as "teasers" - and if you want to watch the rest of the series, you have to pay an extra fee per episode.

      This seems to be the overall Amazon business model - let you in cheap but then attempt to nickel and dime you to death.

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    19. Re:Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hardly, Amazon is playing more games. Their guaranteed two-day shipping is to your local postal center, not to your door. That's something which doesn't matter in cities, but outside those areas it's noticeable. Complain about too many late shipments and you're panned from Prime. Amazon also artificially delays non-prime shipments in order to entice people to sign up for Prime. Oh, and go browse Amazon from your local library's computer. Don't log in. The Prime versions of products are a little more expensive than their non-Prime versions.

      Amazon was awesome when it was still a growing book company. Today it's just as evil as all the other large companies, sometimes more so.

    20. Re:Fuck Walmart by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Don't you have to pay the same taxes when you buy at the nearby WalMarts?

      Yes, but I purchase my computer parts from Newegg.com. I've built three computer with them and many odds and ends.

      While a glut of Walmarts my food store is called WinCo.

      Walmarts have a problem with pricing, one item can be sold for different prices depending upon where you found it.
      I took a photo of the lowest price for 6 pack of Pepsi and had to use it at the check out.

    21. Re: Fuck Walmart by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 1

      Amazon has to charge tax on any purchase that occurs in a state they have a business presence in. Now that Amazon has gone full-out on same day deliveries they pretty much have a warehouse in every major city or region. Thus we're all paying taxes regardless. It's not like it was 5 years ago when Amazon just had a few major warehouses and you could evade sales tax coming out of state.

      Actually it was my first visit that turned me off to Amazon. It was my first stop for on-line shopping.
      Checking out it said Washington state may charge tax soon and I would have to pay tax's on that item; and if Washington didn't they would just keep the extra.
      I've never been back

    22. Re:Fuck Walmart by Trogre · · Score: 1

      Straying off-topic a bit, but:

      You pay for water?

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    23. Re:Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While a glut of Walmarts my food store is called WinCo.

      Love WinCo!! They're the biggest store that I know of in my area that WalMart will not price match against using the WalMart app.

    24. Re:Fuck Walmart by Cederic · · Score: 1

      No, I pay for potable water. It's approximately 95p per cubic metre plus £28 per year.

    25. Re:Fuck Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not a prime customer because they pissed me off auto-renewing without EXTREMELY EXPLICIT PERMISSION and on an unauthorized card. Fuckers think they can charge whatever to whatever. Well, they refunded 2-years of Prime Membership after I chewed them out.

      Anyway, I still bought stuff from them but then the hand soap - fricking hand soap for employees - becomes "Prime only" (it wasn't the first time I bought - would have avoided that brand). Fuck 'em! I bought cheaper at Walmart.com. I buy more and more from Walmart.com with free 2-day shipping and I'm not even in their fucking club. Lower prices, less crap. If I have a problem with their stuff - which I don't - it can be returned with a drive to Walmart (often on my way or just a couple miles away) not a visit to some UPS or FedEx store.

      Amazon is a fucking disaster to search. I always use DDG pound search to start (TN-750 !a). It's a confectionary clusterfuck of side-loading and front-loading BS that adblock doesn't block enough of (I run old PCs with linux and speed doesn't matter so long as vids can stream).

      Then - despite a page with a hundred superfluous elements and links - their package tracking page doesn't actually link to the UPS or USPS tracking service (which has the specific information as to when my package is going to arrive without a fancy ON THE WAY blue bar). When I see someone acting that way and trying to build a walled garden, I bolt.

      If you're happy with Amazon.com - great. I'm happy with competition and more and more of it goes to Walmart.com. Love it!

  3. What A Tangled Web We Weave by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good luck with that!

  4. Where are you FTC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sounds like anti-competitive behavior to me.

  5. Azure is MORE Secure? by bigdady92 · · Score: 0

    It is? Seriously? Which CxO thought up THAT braintrust idea?

    --
    Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
    1. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by sl3xd · · Score: 2

      Let's not forget that Wal*Mart is the same group of geniuses that brought us the laughably insecure CurrentC/MCX - and after that folded, they doubled down, and deployed it anyway as "Wal*Mart Pay".

      And seriously? Complaining that your vendor uses AWS for their own business?!?

      What's next, saying they'll penalize companies that use Ford delivery trucks?

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    2. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by avandesande · · Score: 1

      Than AWS? It's not as crazy as it sounds...

      --
      love is just extroverted narcissism
    3. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Azure isn't owned by a company that is in direct competition with some of Walmart's businesses. This has nothing to do with sane or cost effective business practices for their IT service vendors and everything to do with trying to leverage the fact that Walmart is the bigger player (than the vendors) to deny revenue for a competitor.

      Sadly, while some are already throwing words like "monopoly" around, I suspect this is perfectly above board - these are businesses looking to provide a service *for* Walmart, not sell their products *through* Walmart. As such Walmart is perfectly entitled to specify entirely arbitrary requirements for how Walmart's data and services are provisioned such as mandating a the use of one of their preferred suppliers. If Walmart wants to pay its IT service vendors more to use Azure, Google, or whoever instead of Amazon (assuming Amazon is actually the cheaper option) that's their business, dick move or not. It is, however, probably also going to impact on their bottom line, which might be something the shareholders might want to take note of.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    4. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is clearly not about concern for their customer's or business partner's online security or information privacy. It's about a potential competitor moving in on their brick and mortar turf. Seems like a double standard to me considering Walmart has a significant online shopping footprint itself. Anti-trust lawsuit in 3...2...1

    5. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

      Sadly, while some are already throwing words like "monopoly" around, I suspect this is perfectly above board -

      Not being a lawyer, I don't know if it is legal or not.

      It's a dick move either way.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    6. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 2

      This is hilarious. It's anti-competitive and abuse of monopoly position.

      WalMart could potentially be taken to task for a lot of shit, but it never is. They don't allow CDs with explicit content, so their selection of music is all censored. This accounts for 2% of WalMart sales, but not 2% of WalMart revenue or profits; it accounts for over 10% of music industry CD sales, or at least it did back before digital streaming became big. That's basically WalMart leveraging its enormous monopoly power to constrict free speech--it's still a tough case due to WalMart being a private enterprise, but it'd be an interesting Supreme Court case.

      Consider: we have a lot of consumer protections that amount to, "You're infringing on consumers's rights because they have no alternative and they're not free to choose." Cell phones need to be unlockable or unlocked because everybody locks them. Net Neutrality is there basically because consumers will never be able to get the benefits of a neutral network otherwise. "You're too damned big and you behave like a de-facto part of government" is the unspoken argument. WalMart is that.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    7. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Zocalo · · Score: 1

      Not a lawyer either, but I do deal with tenders for contracts such as this and in general it's absolutely above board to specify a list of preferred suppliers as part of a tender, so unless the US has some specific exception this falls foul of I'm not aware of then Walmart is perfectly entitled to do this. Their systems/data, their rules. It's no different from someone insisting on a given vendor's hardware or software - e.g. Munich mandating that their application stack be open source, to give a more Slashdot friendly example of the practice. That *is* a sane idea, particularly if you're a company or organization of the scale of Walmart and don't want your infrastructure to be built on a grab bag of different platforms selected by whatever vendor happened to win each contract.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    8. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      You seem to misunderstand "free speech" completely, as is sadly typical, even though you do at least acknowledge the fact that it involves private enterprise. The guarantee of free speech is primarily a prohibition on the government's ability to suppress your individual right to express your opinions, not a guarantee that anyone must listen to you, nor a mandate for businesses on which products they choose to sell.

      I think perhaps you also misunderstand what a "monopoly" is. Even by your own admission, WalMart only accounted for just over 10% of music sales in the past, and probably far less these days. Since when is 10% of a market a monopoly? No one is hampering the ability of another retailer to sell those products, and obviously plenty of them did and still do. Consumers always had plenty of choices there, unlike with ISPs and carrier providers.

      There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to direct at WalMart. I don't believe this to be one of them, though.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    9. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You've misunderstood what the article about.

      Walmart isn't requiring their Vendors to use Walmarts data and services, they are telling supplies (say of plastic bins) that they can't use Amazon's AWS services for anything including internal server backups or anything else. They are trying to leverage their massive purchasing power to use it against Amazon in another market.

      Even if Walmart isn't a monpoly they should not be legally able to require suppliers to avoid all Amazon services including those completely unrelated to retailing as they are using their massive purchasing power as a leverage in outside markets. This is the halmark of what the Sherman anti-trust law tried to prevent, companies with massive leverage using that leverage to displace rivals in unrelated markets. AWS is an unrelated market to Walmart, they do not offer services in the web services market.

      Contract terms requiring suppliers not use AWS for internal company services should be illegal as it's an attempt to leverage market share to harm a rival in an orthogonal market. These kind of actions dramatically harm the free market.

    10. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Torodung · · Score: 1

      Maybe if we decided that companies running server farms must legally be separate entities from the businesses that they serve, but in this case, AWS is run by a major competitor in the retail sphere, and there are definitely security concerns for Wal-Mart because the compute services are being offered by the same company.

      Corporate espionage is a thing, and cloud services haven't been around long enough to be properly regulated. We're going to find out all sorts of shady stuff in the coming decades that is being done now, on corporately-owned hardware, and will be illegal later. I have no idea what that shady stuff is, but I expect to read about it in the papers in the next 20-30 years.

    11. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Zocalo · · Score: 2

      Um, no - you need to read the quote in the summary more carefully. It's talking about technology companies that want to help run Walmart's IT services for them and, if they do, that "they can't run applications _for_ the retailer on Amazon's leading cloud-computing service". That's pretty clearly discussing managed IT services being provided to Walmart, not tangible products being sold through them. Other than the dick move nature of it to lock out a competitor rather than on technical grounds, it does actually make sense as a practice and is perfectly legal in every single area around the globe I've dealt with tenders. It's called a mandated or preferred supplier list depending on how strict you want it to be and it's to ensure that when you go to tender the respondants are all going to propose a solution that is compatible with what you already have in place and won't require that you introduce new training and skill set requirements on your staff.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    12. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      You seem to misunderstand "free speech" completely,

      Not really, no. We've actually had "freedom of speech" cases ruled against private enterprise for their effective ability to infringe on the rights of others. That's generally only happened when you could reasonably prove that private enterprises can do such a thing, which is exceedingly-rare.

      I think perhaps you also misunderstand what a "monopoly" is. Even by your own admission, WalMart only accounted for just over 10% of music sales in the past, and probably far less these days. Since when is 10% of a market a monopoly?

      Majority players with less than half of the market have been ruled against in monopoly-abuse cases. It's typically only doable when they're the only big player or one of very few (e.g. a duopoly two-plus market and you have 34% of the market), or when they have large exclusive markets.

      WalMart isn't the only retail store; it's a major source of sales of some classes of goods to some demographics, and frequently considered to be in a duopoly with Target. Target has better profits, WalMart has a bigger general market. The capacity to damage and thus control not one competitor, but an entire market, is generally enough to get you some unwanted attention.

      We have, in fact, taken steps of varying degrees of severity against these sorts of things, and not just with government lawsuits and monopoly hearings. There have been rulings against for-profit private colleges dictating that they must allow students to speak on any and all political topics because the college was violating the free speech of certain groups by banning them from assembling and speaking based on their topic. We create an enormous span of regulatory policies forcing businesses away from the violation of some consumers's rights. Contract law doesn't even allow you to waive your rights through private contracts--so much so that a contract which does so can be wholly-invalid if it has no provision nor reasonable method for invalidating those specific clauses.

      The government can't go into every corner deli and tell them people can't be sent out for discussing gay marriage while eating there. They have determined that some companies are in such a position that the rules actually do apply to them. That's why most of us aren't lawyers: the things that happen in law don't always fit with what you'd understand after reading the damned thing. An encyclopedic knowledge of case law is a strong requirement.

      From that position, I still say it would have been amusing to see certain lawsuits brought up against WalMart. They might not win, but they did, at one time, have a reasonable argument here and there.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    13. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      Not really, no. We've actually had "freedom of speech" cases ruled against private enterprise for their effective ability to infringe on the rights of others. That's generally only happened when you could reasonably prove that private enterprises can do such a thing, which is exceedingly-rare.

      My understanding is that such cases typically involve suppression of their own employees' free speech, such as attempts to quell discussion of forming a union, for instance. I'd be surprised if there were many cases involving consumers and product selection, but I admit I'm not exactly knowledgeable about such case histories.

      I actually agree with most of what you said, but don't quite see how it applies to the topic at hand, except through a rather tortuous leap of logic. You indicate that this topic may be too complex for non-lawyers to understand. I tend to disagree here - I think it's a very straightforward matter of retailers being allowed to sell what they want within reasonable, well-regulated constraints. The law is not intended to serve lawyers, but the public interest, and I can't see in this particular case how consumers were harmed in any way.

      I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one. Fortunately, the courts so far seem to agree with my take on things.

      P.S. Lawsuits are only "amusing" until one gets directed your way.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    14. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You may be right, but the parent poster proves that there is going to be an increased FUD factor when a supplier has to choose their cloud provider. This will hurt Amazon even if Walmart never bans a single cracker supplier for using AWS. I use cracker as an example, it could be pants, tires, or canned soup.

    15. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      managed IT services being provided to Walmart, not tangible products being sold through them.

      Is the order-tracking app for plastic bins that Walmart uses to communicate with the plastic bin company a "managed IT service being provided to Walmart"?

      seems like word-play.

      I don't believe Google has similar requirements of vendors, and that's a much simpler relationship.

    16. Re:Azure is MORE Secure? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um no. You misunderstand what the article is about.
      You lose.

  6. I've never shopped there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Waltmart"?

    1. Re:I've never shopped there by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      They sell Crisco routers and Sonny televisions.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    2. Re:I've never shopped there by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Funny

      They sell Crisco routers and Sonny televisions.

      My Crisco router got fried.

      --
      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    3. Re:I've never shopped there by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      Oh man, looks like the chips are down!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  7. Work-around... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can't you just set up your own load balancer to then point to your AWS instances and Walmart would be none-the-wiser ?

    1. Re:Work-around... by TWX · · Score: 1

      Sure, but isn't the point of offloading to a cloud-computing service to let someone else worry about the box?

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    2. Re:Work-around... by Bigbutt · · Score: 1

      You would use 'ubernetes' to manage your cloud computers hosted on different cloud platforms. Just tell your controller to not use the AWS instances for Wal*Mart business I guess.

      [John]

      --
      Shit better not happen!
  8. Place IBM Softlayer Cloud advertising here by martiniturbide · · Score: 1

    Came on Walmart not the MS Cloud !!!

  9. fuck walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    there is absolutely no reason to use Walmart for a fucking thing unless there is an emergency. You get shit service, can't ever find anyone to help, Goddamn self checkout is always fucking closed (WHY!!!!!!) forcing you to go to the one fucking cashier sitting on register 15 out 30. The really good stores have two registers open. Fuck them and their shitty chinese products. However, to be fair , I have a long list of companies on my "fuck them" list.

  10. Lawsuit in 3, 2, 1... by 3vi1 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Some directors apparently slept through their college discussions on anti-trust and restrictive practices.

    1. Re:Lawsuit in 3, 2, 1... by BradleyUffner · · Score: 1

      Wallmart isn't even close to having a monopoly on cloud services.

    2. Re:Lawsuit in 3, 2, 1... by Obfuscant · · Score: 1
      They're not saying anyone has to use Walmart's servers, only that they can't use Amazon's. But there's two problems with this story in the first place:

      Walmart doesn't have "partners". They have suppliers who have the hobnail boots on their throat to provide what Walmart wants.

      And both links are garbage click bait for WSJ (paywalled) and Fortune (nearly blank page.)

    3. Re:Lawsuit in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pretty hard to say Wal-Mart is a monopoly given there is Amazon. And Target. And K-Mart. And Meijer's. And Kroger's. And Walgreens, CVS, Best Buy, Sears, JC Penny's, Big Lots, Rite Aid, Costco, Lowes, Home Depot, and a few dozen other regional supermarkets, pharmacies, hardware stores, and general store chains.

      There are quite a few companies that won't abide by Wal-Mart's terms and they are still around and doing pretty well. In my neck of the woods Target is doing much better than Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has closed a few stores, and Target has just opened a half dozen new stores. When you have a monopoly position and are abusing that position, that kind of thing doesn't happen.

    4. Re:Lawsuit in 3, 2, 1... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I didn't even know Walmart HAD cloud services.

    5. Re:Lawsuit in 3, 2, 1... by thomst · · Score: 1

      Obfuscant complained:

      And both links are garbage click bait for WSJ (paywalled) and Fortune (nearly blank page.)

      You have to enable scripts from fortune.com to see the article. I just have NoScript enable them temporarily, then close the window and revoke the authorization when I'm done reading.

      The WSJ link IS just a teaser, though. To read the whole article, you have to subscribe ...

      --
      Check out my novel.
    6. Re:Lawsuit in 3, 2, 1... by Obfuscant · · Score: 1

      The WSJ link IS just a teaser, though. To read the whole article, you have to subscribe ...

      That's what "paywall" means. And it wasn't a complaint, it was a statement of fact.

    7. Re:Lawsuit in 3, 2, 1... by thomst · · Score: 1

      Obfuscant explained:

      The WSJ link IS just a teaser, though. To read the whole article, you have to subscribe ...

      That's what "paywall" means. And it wasn't a complaint, it was a statement of fact.

      I wasn't disagreeing with you, I was merely providing detail for everyone here who did not rtf - which is basically everyone here, as you know.

      Also, there is no conflict between complaining and stating a fact. It is entirely possible to do both. As you know ...

      --
      Check out my novel.
  11. Drink our Kool-Aid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I guess they want people to drink their Kool-Aid. Wonder how well that will work out.

  12. azure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    azure is technology by Microsoft. Similar to the Microsoft Cloud which we know exists azure seems to be a different style of computing. Everyone knows you can get an Adobe Cloud account to store all of your PSD or PDF files you created or distilled. How does azure have anything to do with that. It is a state of mind. Just do a google search for azure and read up on it. Might want to have a sandwich when you do that.

  13. Who cares? Just lie to them. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Say "Yeah, we're moving, be done soon". Then "Yeah, we moved".

    Of course the contract is labelled as "Commercial in Confidence" and you're not allowed to discuss it with third parties....

  14. Actually, getting out of AWS is good advice by williamyf · · Score: 2

    Get out of AWS and GoggleCloud ASAP!

    Go instead to either Asure, or to OpenStack...

    If you only use IaaS, this is not as critical, but if you use PaaS, SaaS, or are developing your own Cloud Software from scratch, this is critical.

    Amazon and Google have their own set of APIs and management interfaces. So, once in their clood, never back to on premises, or to another cloud from a different provider (there are some efforts to replicate some of Amazon's APIs, but those are Tepid and Incomplete).

    With Asure and OpenStack, the advantages are plenty. Want to go from on-Premises to Cloud? No problem, both are handled the same way. Want to have hibrid cloud with spillover? again, no problem, your Cloud Sw APIs and infrastructure work the same.

    Want competing providers? No problem, in OpenStack there are competitors aplenty, and with Asure, while the SW is ultimately developed by Microsoft alone, there are plenty of channel/partners to set up your public cloud or private one.

    Want your cloud no to be in the USoA under control of a USoA company, no problem with Asure or OpenStack.... with Amazon or Google: You are SooL.

    So, if you are a sysadmin in a Waltmart provider, use this golden opportunity to justify to the CxO Suite (and justify plenty of funding for) a project to migrate from AWS (or Google) to some OpenStack or Asure Provider...

    Best of luck and all the power to you!

    --
    *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
    1. Re:Actually, getting out of AWS is good advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You failed to provide a single reason to migrate other than astroturf for Microsoft.

    2. Re:Actually, getting out of AWS is good advice by Zaphon · · Score: 1

      You just gave the same reasons to not use Amazon and Google as to not use Azure (that you for some reason keep calling Asure). As once you integrate with Azure, you're not coming back to the data center either (unless you severely restrict which services you use, but the same could be said of both Amazon and Google).

    3. Re:Actually, getting out of AWS is good advice by williamyf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Then go to OpenStack and be happy... (I pitched OpenStack as well, in case you did not notice).

      As a matter of fact, I am a Technical trainer for, among other things, OpenStack (also, storage and servers), so, it behooves me if everyone getting out of AWS or GoogleCloud goes to OpenStack (more work, more £€¥$)...

      So, no astroturfing. Just Honest opinion, I'd love evryone to go form AWS or GoogleCloud to OpenStack instead of Asure, but the reality is that not everyone can do so, or will do so

      --
      *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
    4. Re:Actually, getting out of AWS is good advice by williamyf · · Score: 1

      Spanish Speaker here, so, sorry for the _z_ and _s_ confusion.

      and, may I remind you of two things:

      1.) I pitched Openstack as well

      2.) You can install azure in your datacenter, paying MS the respective licenses, and it will work and behave as would an Azure public cloud, either the Microsoft one, or one provided by a partner... So, both with azure, and with OpenStack, you can move your workloads from the public cloud of one company to the public cloud of another company, or publicprivate cloud pretty much seamlessly.

      As I said in another comment, among other things, I am a technical trainer in OpenStack, so it behooves me that every one moves from AWS or GoogleCloud to OpenStack, but, alas, that is a pipe dream...

      --
      *** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
    5. Re:Actually, getting out of AWS is good advice by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 1

      AWS is providing services for the CIA \ IC. So maybe you don't want your data falling into the hand of the government....

    6. Re:Actually, getting out of AWS is good advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If you're a Technical trainer, you might need to learn that Microsofts offering is called Azure, not Asure.

    7. Re:Actually, getting out of AWS is good advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amazon and Google have their own set of APIs and management interfaces. So, once in their clood, never back to on premises, or to another cloud from a different provider

      This is a good thing to worry about, but I don't understand how it's better with Azure. It needs to be better enough to offset their inferior performance.

      OpenStack, bless their hearts, does not seem like a competitor to me because (1) it doesn't offer the elasticity of being a small user in a big pool if you have to run the pool yourself and actually place orders with Dell if you want to spin up VMs. Just-in-time orders, staging environments, batch jobs, are less efficient, and (2) there is a lot more work for you to do: managing openstack. Granted, (1) & (2) are kinda built into the cloud markup. Competition may change that, but to the extent it doesn't, I'm wrong and OpenStack is a competitor.

      However it will also never offer the low-latency access to proprietary software databases and walled-garden CDNs that are the real reason many people sign up for this cloud crap. That's another place people should be looking for monopolistic product tying: is it unnecessarily hard to use Cloud Spanner from your own datacenter, or from AWS? I think some of the problems are fundamental, but for example the ingress/egress fees are ridiculous usury with all three clouds.

  15. Walmart - Deploy your own cloud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Walmart could benefit from leveraging their store locations for deploying cloud hosting.

    When you've got the funds, and a competitor enters your core business, go after their core businesses in return. Survival of the fittest.

  16. Companies aren't looking before they leap by zerofoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Companies need to be very careful about what data is being stored in someone else's datacenter.

    I'm sure if enough of Walmart's suppliers store enough data in AWS, Amazon could get some tremendous insights into Walmart's supply chain.

    In my opinion too many companies have rushed to the cloud and have not completely thought out the repercussions of that choice. If your data is stored in AWS or Azure is it really your data? What if the Government decides to subpoena your data and your company decides to fight the subpoena, but Amazon decides it isn't worth the trouble - and they hand over your data?

    The day of reckoning is coming for cloud services and it won't be technical that brings the pain - it will be legal.

    1. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So you are claiming Amazon data mines customers of AWS?!? I can't tell if you are attempting to fearmonger, or if you are just a complete idiot.

    2. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Cyberax · · Score: 1

      Amazon absolutely does not spy on customers through AWS. Hell, AWS is approved for ITAR and government-related activities.

    3. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 1

      EXACTLY! Mod up.

    4. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As often as analogies to physical dealings fail miserably to convey the complexity of modern issues (example: encryption or password vs. key for a physical lock or combination lock) I wonder if there is anything we could learn from the self storage industry when it comes to data warehousing... I think people have a rather strong understanding that under the storage company's contract (which you sign) you definitely still own your things inside that, and retain rights to it, but at the same time you sign over some rights regarding what the storage company is allowed to do with said things in the event you violate (or even don't violate) said contract... the most common example is lack of payment and high quality entertainment like Storage Wars.

      How do storage company's handle a search warrant related to the renter of the storage unit? I imagine they comply with any lawful order they choose not to fight, and it is part of your contract with them that you subject your possessions stored there to such a search. I can also see this easily being the same thing for the cloud which you've pointed out very clearly.

    5. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the government loves people like you.

    6. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you hand over data and control to a third party, do you own it and control it?

      Hint: It's a simple answer and was rejected by executives as an idea for 40 years.

    7. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to be very diligent about which cloud you choose.
      One shift of the wind and the cloud you invested in is gone; along with what you put into it.

    8. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Voyager529 · · Score: 1

      So you are claiming Amazon data mines customers of AWS?!? I can't tell if you are attempting to fearmonger, or if you are just a complete idiot.

      No, he's claiming that if Amazon *were* to be data mining the AWS information from known Wal-Mart vendors and partners for strategic information that would be useful for Amazon, there would be no meaningful way to detect it. Though Amazon has managed to be "generally less evil" than the other major cloud providers, it would still require Wal-Mart to place massive trust in their biggest competitor to act ethically.

      Wal-Mart isn't saying not to use Azure or GCC or Rackspace; they're not concerned about the systemic and philosophical ramifications of storing data on someone else's hard drive. They're saying they don't want to run the risk of Amazon deciding at some point to cease actively choosing to forego a major competitive advantage that would very difficult for Wal-Mart to prove if it ever did happen.

      Now, Wal-Mart *could* meet some companies halfway by offering to cover the costs of transitioning, which is where they lose my support for their position. However, I'd be remiss to turn a blind eye to a very reasonable concern.

    9. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Rmorph · · Score: 1

      Companies need to be very careful about what data is being stored in someone else's datacenter.

      I'm sure if enough of Walmart's suppliers store enough data in AWS, Amazon could get some tremendous insights into Walmart's supply chain.

      In my opinion too many companies have rushed to the cloud and have not completely thought out the repercussions of that choice. If your data is stored in AWS or Azure is it really your data? What if the Government decides to subpoena your data and your company decides to fight the subpoena, but Amazon decides it isn't worth the trouble - and they hand over your data?

      The day of reckoning is coming for cloud services and it won't be technical that brings the pain - it will be legal.

      You are confused. Most corporate customers will enter an entirely different service contract with cloud providers, more akin to a 3rd party commercial hosting contract which ensure security and privacy controls that are often subject to pretty strict SLAs and security contracts that can meet many regulatory requirements and policies. This is entirely different from the EULA-level contracts that consumers often enter into in return for "free" cloud services - which will probably include data-mining etc. However there are "trust issues" in today's surveillance society where we need to ask if our providers are willingly handing over customer data to government intelligence services. Several recent court cases involving Microsoft in Ireland and google in Pennsylvania with the US government give us some insight into a battle that concerns us all - but generally it must be said that Cloud providers are *so far* largely unwilling to compromise their customers data or exploit it to that level that you see to think they do. Its just bad for business and utterly undermines the "cloud is safe for business" concept.

    10. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by EvilAlphonso · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The cloud provider has complete access to the hypervisor, and still could access the data in memory even if it is encrypted at-rest and in-flight. If their hardware platform uses Intel's AMT or the AMD's PSP, a third party could do the same remotely. Colocated VMs could also reach the data through either VM escape or cache-based jamming agreement.

      You are correct that the pain will be legal, even tho not for the cloud provider(s) but for their customers. I'm not sure about the regulation in the US, but in Europe I remain fully responsible for the confidentiality of my customer data even if I outsource the hosting to a cloud provider. And thanks to new regulation coming into force next year, my fines will be doubled if a leak happens through negligence... and deciding to host on a cloud with the issues of the previous paragraph can be construed as negligence.

    11. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Being approved by the USG is almost proof that it does, at least, have spying capabilities.

    12. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      >So you are claiming Amazon data mines customers of AWS?!

      Yes. Yes they do. And if you can't think of how you are the idiot with a complete lack of imagination.

      Measurements of encrypted traffic between known data sources can give huge amount of information about the amount and type of business your competitor is doing. For example, the amount of routed traffic to IP addresses held by credit card processors. Significant fluctuations can give lots of info about the health of the company. Packets being routed to china or other foreign nations can leak information about vendors.

      Amazon is a top notch analytics company, and they can gain huge amounts of inside from secondary and tertiary sources, like DNS queries. Putting that data on your competitor's network is not only stupid, it could possibly be criminal under some SEC regulation.

    13. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      Amazon is an analytics company. They don't need access to your data. They already have access to your metadata. If you use their internal DNS you leak information. If you route traffic (even encrypted traffic) via their network that is not routed elsewhere via tunnel, they know who you contact.

      Much like we discovered how many tanks Germany was making in WWII, Amazon can apply some advanced math at your encrypted traffic patterns and deduce many things about your business.

    14. Re:Companies aren't looking before they leap by EvilAlphonso · · Score: 1

      Talking from what I have seen when working in managed services and shared/cloud hosting environments... some admins have no qualms reading clients' mailboxes or snooping around clients' data when they're bored. Triply so if it's a follow-the-sun team, where only one localization is familiar with (or realistically gives a fuck about) European data privacy laws.

  17. CVS is also tabling it. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

    Picked up a rumor that CVS was planning to move to AWS, they decided not to go to AWS.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  18. If there isn't a consortium of Walmart's vendors.. by istartedi · · Score: 1

    If there isn't a consortium of Walmart's vendors, there should be. That seems like a logical direction for our progression of absurdity. "Corporations are people". Powerful "people". Powerful enough to form a union with which Walmart would have no choice but to sign a fair contract.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
  19. Clinton by SteveHulett · · Score: 0, Troll

    Well what do you expect? Hillary Clinton was on the board of directors. The democrats, and by extension these liberal companies that are either run by, or afraid of Democrats use their power to control you. If it's not illegal because of a little thing like constitutionality, they just do an end run around that by controlling free speech in some other way. Usually some form of intimidation. Sadly, Amazon is owned by a liberal too. They all get big and successful, and then decide that they know what is best for you, and therefore they should be able to control you.

    1. Re: Clinton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Psssst- There's a liberal under your bed.

    2. Re: Clinton by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and she's hot.

  20. Facepunch incoming by Nogrial · · Score: 0

    The market will more than likely punch Walmart in the face for this one. I hope they are humbled and learn from pithy requirements on their vendors.

  21. This is the definition of anti-trust crime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Using your power in one area to influence actions in another area is basically the reason for and foundation of anti-trust law in the USA.

    1. Re:This is the definition of anti-trust crime by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 1

      And yet the government isn't stopping Amazon from buying Whole Foods....wait you weren't talking about that were you.....

    2. Re:This is the definition of anti-trust crime by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      You are confusing monopoly coercion with a corporate acquisition.

      Nice try though.

      Conglomerates are not a new or interesting thing.

      Hell, as potentially evil and dangerous as Amazon is they are a platform to competitors that fill in Amazon's own gaps. That can be very handy sometimes.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re:This is the definition of anti-trust crime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wal Mart's lawyers are not that stupid. I'm sure they thought through all of the potential legal ramifications of this and believe they can beat any case brought against them.

      If Wal Mart was using its power to blatantly suppress competition by dictating. "If you buy things from our competitors, we won't buy anything from you." it would definitely run afoul of the law. In this case, they're only talking about one particular service. I think they can argue that they are not doing this to suppress competition, but to protect their business interests.

      "A Walmart spokesman told the Journal that some suppliers do use AWS services, but that in some cases, the retailer is wary of putting sensitive data on a competitor's servers."

      Makes sense to me.

  22. Sounds Like APPL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The excersise exactly the same level of control throughout their entire Supply Chain so why is Walmart's doing the same thing to their vendors (not customers mind you but those idiots willing to be bound by exclusive contracts with them) any more evil then Apple?

    1. Re:Sounds Like APPL by AutodidactLabrat · · Score: 1

      Who said it was MORE evil.
      Well, except for the Taxpayer subsidized work units that is.

  23. Re:If there isn't a consortium of Walmart's vendor by MountainLogic · · Score: 1

    Perhaps the name of the consortium of vendors you are looking for is called the PRC.

  24. Simple solution by tattood · · Score: 1

    The simple solution is to rent a couple small Azure instances, and proxy all of your AWS traffic through there. As far as WalMart knows, your new site is hosted in Azure!

    --
    WTB [sig], PST!!!
  25. Supliers will do cost-benefit analysis by Streetlight · · Score: 1

    Some of the stuff you can buy at Walmart will be from fairly large corporations having their brands as well as be Walmart banded stuff like soap and toothpaste from Procter and Gamble, Dickies from Dickies, and many more items. If any of these brands use AWS for some or all of their data handling how likely is it that they'll drop AWS just to get shelf space or product pages on Jet? If you want Crest toothpaste or Tide detergent and it's not at Walmart you have many other places to go, Including Amazon. Will the cost of moving to another data storage service make up for the loss in business at Walmart? If not, Walmart may be the loser when they won't sell these name brand, popular items.

    --
    In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
    1. Re:Supliers will do cost-benefit analysis by PlusFiveTroll · · Score: 1

      >Walmart may be the loser when they won't sell these name brand, popular items.

      To avoid doing business with walmart is to invite death. To do business with walmart is to embrace death. P&G is not going to lose a multibillion dollar account because of AWS.

  26. What happened to Walmart's cloud portability? by swb · · Score: 1

    I seem to remember Walmart trying to do the Silicon Valley thing a couple of years ago, opening an office there (run by SV cultural standards, not Benton, Ark. standards) and making a bunch of noise about developing a cloud portability system that would let vendors easily move workloads (which I understood to be more like virtualization workloads than docker-type containers) between cloud providers.

    Whatever happened to this? Did OpenStack meet their needs and they gave up on the concept, or what? Maybe my memory fails me, but I seem to recall that they were definitely interested in portability to AWS at the time.

  27. Monopoly or not by XXongo · · Score: 1

    Before anyone starts ranting that Walmart is not a monopoly, there are two kinds of monopolies. Horizontal where the company controls a particular step of the process across the entire market, and vertical, where the company controls every aspect from beginning to end as much as possible and dictates all aspects of everything that the company deals with.

    The second definition here is correctly called "vertical integration," not "vertical monopoly."

  28. DigitalOcean and OVH are better anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I never understood why people use AWS. It's a big, smelly, awkward, and expensive beast run by Amazon. The Amazon console is a disaster to navigate let alone actually use it and their API is an equally terrible nightmare of poorly written documentation with bloated SDKs. DigitalOcean is cheaper than AWS, has a much nicer API and dashboard, and the community has put together some nice SDKs and tools.

    Also OVH, a Canadian company that has been around since the mid-1990's, has even more impressive VPS and cloud solutions and is even cheaper than DO but they have some account billing issues they really need to work on (e.g. automated renewals).

    1. Re:DigitalOcean and OVH are better anyway by Ash-Fox · · Score: 1

      It's a big, smelly, awkward, and expensive beast run by Amazon

      Actually, when you start getting to large scales, it's cheaper.

      Also OVH, a Canadian company that has been around since the mid-1990's, has even more impressive VPS and cloud solutions and is even cheaper than DO

      What's their equivalent to DigitalOcean Cloud Firewalls, one click snapshot/VM etc. transfer between different accounts?

      --
      Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
  29. hey hey, you you, get offa that cloud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    two's a crowd on amazon's cloud, baby

  30. Is it me, or does this smell like anti-trust by loren · · Score: 1

    Several are commenting on if this makes Walmart a monopoly (or some permutation thereof)... and we're talking about the same laws that govern anti-trust violations and monopolies... but to me this sounds more like anti-trust style collusion. Multiple companies (Walmart and their suppliers) with some common interests organizing to give preferential or (in this case) discriminatory treatment to one or a small group of companies or individuals. Amazon is not hurting for customers, but this is hard to see as anything but a move to damage their customer base.

    Not throwing any pitty-parties... just what it looks like to me.

    --

    Loren Osborn

    Software isn't software without source code. -- NASA
  31. Two words: Homomorphic encryption by sl3xd · · Score: 1

    Homomorphic encryption is well suited for this situation - you can even perform operations on the data stored in the cloud, and the cloud provider isn't able to eavesdrop on anything, because decryption isn't required.

    Even without homomorphic encryption, there are plenty of HSM (hardware security module) devices which are widely used to handle encryption in a way that the cloud provider doesn't have access to the encryption key, nor do they have the ability to decrypt data.

    --
    -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  32. Quite sensible - Traffic analysis by A+Pressbutton · · Score: 1

    You are a Walmart supplier using AWS

    Walmart asks you to do a thing
    chances are you store more data or more frequently or differently

    Amazon doesnt need to hack the db or look or anything

    Just like the TLAs use metadata, Amazon can use traffic analysis to work out what is happening

    Key point:

    Completely legally - they will not be peeking at the data at all - just a special case of optimising AWS.

  33. Get off Amazon's cloud? by Trogre · · Score: 2

    Or "Satya just gave me a very nice yacht".

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  34. "quality" by kqc7011 · · Score: 1

    Wal-Mart will tell a supplier what it is willing to pay for a item and then the supplier makes the item with materials that let the supplier still make a profit. And the supplier will sell at the price level set by Wal-Mart at least until the items built to sell in Wal-Mart start getting a degraded reputation. Amazon, does not care what the supplier charges as long as Amazon gets its cut. Amazon sells lots of stuff with a level of quality that leaves much to be desired. But, I think that most customers will blame the supplier for the lack of quality, not Amazon. Wal-Mart customers blame Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has a reputation for treating suppliers like beggars.

    --
    Passionately Indifferent
  35. Dinosaurs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Asda (their UK arm) kicked up a stink when my former employer was moving their SaaS offering from in-house servers to aws. Not sure why they behave as they do, they're dinasours who think they can dictate the terms. What next, we don't like Apple so don't use MacBooks? Or vendor X because we don't like them? Ridiculous

  36. Actually, getting into antsle is good advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://antsle.com/

    Then run your own private cloud.

  37. Companies aren't looking before they Kabylake. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's why Intel created SGX so the cloud would be more secure.

    https://securosis.com/blog/intel-software-guard-extensions-sgx-is-mighty-interesting

  38. Please stop posting WSJ 'news' by fleabay · · Score: 1

    The article is from WSJ and the so called alternative source is a rewording of the WSJ article, even going so far as to use 'according to WSJ' to downplay any non investigating of their own.

    Quit using FUCKING WSJ articles. What's next, National Enquirer as a reliable source?

    --
    PlanetVulkan.com
    1. Re:Please stop posting WSJ 'news' by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

      So what's wrong with WSJ? I've read them for years and made a lot of money based on their articles. They're factual, accurate and reliable. On the other hand, Wash Post, NY Times, it's wonder news. If it's right, it's a wonder (aka fake news). Right up there with a broken clock is correct twice a day. Used to have a WashPo delivered to my house. Stopped that probably 20 years ago. When there were being busted for publishing knowingly bullshit articles. The person that was a composite story... and so on.

      That's a good test. I wonder which has more factual stories, the National Enquirer or Time mag, Rolling Stone, WashPo, NY Times. Rolling Stone just had a big old settlement over their bullshit story about gang rape at a virginia campus. Those guys will probably still suffer from that even though NOTHING happened. Time and their bullshit piece on Trump just moments into his term and the MLK bust. They couldn't wait to publish something negative about him. They say - we're journalist. When we found out what we published was bullshit (Which in my opinion he knew the whole time and lied about it) we retracted it. Yea, after just about everyone had read it and will never read a retraction.

      So no, use more WSJ articles. You need a better source of news, clearly. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if your IQ increases, your pay goes up, other good things happen. Even your dog will probably like you.

  39. stupid walmart execs don't get how the cloud works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is just proof that higher-ups at Walmart simply don't get how the cloud works!
    Competitors use AWS today. Look at Amazon's own Prime Video service and then
    look at how Netflix uses Amazon Web Services. They are direct competitors in video.
    Go look at where Apple runs the iTunes store .... it too is in AWS!!!
    c'mon! Those two both aim to sell digital music to people.... so direct competitors!

    Amazon doesn't give two poops about AWS customer data! Why would they want
    to look at your private bits & bytes??? Makes NO SENSE?!
    Google on the other hand ... reads your gmails!

  40. Nothing to See Here by dcw3 · · Score: 1

    Why is this action surprising to anyone? If you were running a business, would you allow your direct competitor access to your (or your suppliers) pricing information? That would clearly give them the upper hand. Anyone who thinks that's a smart idea should be fired.

    --
    Just another day in Paradise
    1. Re:Nothing to See Here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where does it stop though? If you are a supplier to Wal-Mart should you let them tell you who you can talk to or who you can bank with too? It's unconscionable.

  41. #fakenews by MooseMiester · · Score: 1

    This story is simply not true. What WalMart is doing is telling suppliers they must host their own product images and feed them to WalMart's website.

    Nothing in any of the official communication from WalMart about this said ANYTHING about a preferred cloud vendor.

    This story comes from SnowFlake Computing, a startup that's trying to make a name for itself... but as of yet hasn't got squat.

    --
    Murphy was an optimist