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