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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.

10 of 173 comments (clear)

  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 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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.

    6. 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.

  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 RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      covfefe

  3. 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.