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Walmart Teams Up With Microsoft To Fight Amazon, Netflix (cnn.com)
Slashdot readers hyperclocker and Hallux-F-Sinister have shared news about Walmart's new strategy to take on Amazon. In a nutshell, Walmart will use more of Microsoft's cloud services and work with the company on AI and machine learning projects. The goal is to reduce its energy consumption and improve its delivery systems. Hyperclocker shares an excerpt from a report: Today, Walmart announced that it has established a strategic partnership with Microsoft to, "further accelerate Walmart's digital transformation in retail, empower its associates worldwide and make shopping faster and easier for millions of customers around the world." What that means in reality is, Walmart is embracing Microsoft's cloud services and will run its digital operations by taking full advantage of Microsoft Azure and Office 365. The partnership agreement lasts for five years and starts with a team of Walmart and Microsoft engineers working together to transition the retailer to Microsoft's ecosystem.
Hallux-F-Sinister provides some commentary: According to CNN Money, Walmart and Microsoft are ganging up on Amazon.com. I found myself wondering if this was more like Lex Luthor teaming up with the Joker to fight Sinestro, or Bruce Wayne letting Tony Stark use the Bat Computer to fight against the thing Richard Pryor's character designed in whichever godawful nineteen eighties-era Superman sequel he was in. The story itself would bore an accountant to tears, I am convinced, so I did not dare read it for fear of being rendered insensate; but here is the URL if you find you are in desperate need of sleep. Perhaps this other bit of news will wake you up: Walmart is also contemplating starting its own streaming service to compete with Amazon and Netflix. According to GeekWire, citing The Information, "Walmart is considering various ways to stand out, including undercutting Amazon and Netflix on price or offering an ad-supported free service."
..... IBM
for people of MicroSoft presented by walmart
Perhaps this other bit of news will wake you up: Walmart is also contemplating starting its own streaming service to compete with Amazon and Netflix.
They already did and it sucked. Maybe that's why nobody remembers it.
Really all I read was: "Multi-hundred billion dollar company, joins up with another multi-hundred billion dollar company to go after an different multi-hundred billion dollar company. "
If you don't mind, I'll just take one of those hundred billions and you guys go to town on each other. You guys won't miss it.
Ask Nokia how partnering with Microsoft went when trying to compete with the big guys at their very own game.
Walmart should really be investing in their own tech and bringing online their own cloud services without blowing boondoggles worth of investment in Microsofts Cloud services.
Microsoft is trying hard to compete with Amazon as it is without some little dust mite trying to piggyback to victory. I say trying hard, but I really mean Amazon has already cleaned Microsoft off the bottom of its heel with a stick but Microsoft just doesn't know when its shit fails to stick.
I find it funny how Walmart is complaining about Amazon. Walmart came into town, under cut everyone and all the other chains folded up shop. Now Amazon is using the same tactics and Walmart cries fowl. Eat a dick Walmart
So what do you get when you team up two losers in the online space? Just a giant cluster. Way to go, MicroMart (or is it WalSoft?) - I see this as being yet another epic failure and waste of money. But I guess if you don't try you're not doing your job. Just two dinosaurs that are going to get left behind like K-Mart and IBM.
At it's heart, Amazon is a technology company. It's filled with technologists, and the success it has had in retail is, in some ways, a side effect. At it's heart, Walmart is a bulk purchasing company and a real estate company. It is filled with buyers and real estate experts. Microsoft doesn't care about Walmart succeeding in retail, it cares about selling more cloud processing to Walmart, by making things more complicated and AI-driven, requiring more computing power. It's like teaming up with IBM. I shop at Walmart all the time in their brick and mortar stores, but Walmart will never be able to compete with Amazon online, because the experience will be clunky, due to the factors above. Amazon has a very seamless online buying experience, and excellent customer service, and that's what people care about when purchasing things online.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
GET A ROPE
You probably meant "foul". However, Walmart's chickens have come home to roost.
Microsoft should stick to windows and Walmart should stick to selling racist t-shirts.
What absolutely everyone wants from a movie streaming service is a BIG DAMN LIST of movies to watch.
Every offering available right now has like 20% of what I actually want to see. I think of something I want to watch, I check, and nope, they don't have it. 4 times out of 5.
The best deal out there, right now, is Netflix's old dvd-by-mail offering. It blows all the streaming offerings away in terms of range of content. Though, sadly, even it has been cut down from what it was during its heyday, with many older movies and shows lost to the "unknown availability" void forever.
We want it all. One service, with all the options. That's exactly what the industry refuses to give us because ever IP holder thinks they need to spin up their own service instead of license the content out. Fuck you, you greedy bastards, you will MAKE UP FOR IT IN VOLUME if you give us the all-in-one streaming service that we ALL want.
Now that AWS is profitable, every brick and mortar retailer is on there way out of AWS and into GCP and Azure. Walmart made the "stop putting money into a malicious competitor's hands" over a year ago. They're just now done with internal PoCs and such to validate migration plans.
Nobody really likes doing business with Amazon at the corporate tier because you never know when Jeff is going to decide to consume your market for himself. Bezos need to get a fluffy white cat to complete the Bond villain thing he has going.
Have any of you ever visited Walmart's website? It's a total clusterfuck. Go there and search for an item in a local store or online only. You'll see.
Everybody forgets that Sears was the leader of this whole circle and look how they faired after all the years of not changing. This should help with some marketing changes but bottom line is both companies will end up still taking their cut from your or somebodies wallet. BTW - Walmart already has a streaming service called VUDU and has not faired well against Netflix primarily because they just can't deliver the same way.
Kind of hard for all the local retailers, but Walmart has my respect for being a company that can move into a town and kick butt.
They do this the old fashioned way by appearing to do a good job of providing consumer value.
In other words, the user is the customer. If we serve him, we will do well.
There was a time when Msft at least tried to provide value to the user who was their customer.
At this point they do not seem to even try to appear to provide value.
Instead they use the market position from the good ole days to cram their way into a user as a product business plan.
User is the product, lets make money by exploiting him.
These are two dramatically different strategies.
Old school physical value versus new school secondary feed on old school.
It seems a futile act of desperation to try to get them to work together.
Amazon's plan is both the buyers and sellers are our customers.
Walmart alienated a great many sellers when it killed the local folks.
Perhaps a better path forward than a wizzy web page is to figure out a way to embrace them?
Amazon is a direct competitor of both Walmart and Microsoft. Walmart on the retail side and MS on the cloud services side. Yes, Walmart's online website sucks but it will get better. If they have proven anything over the years it is that they are tenacious and they know how to make money.
As near as I can tell, AWS is the only profitable division in Amazon. Everything else loses money and yet their stock price is through the roof. Traditional measures like P/E ratio don't seem to count for much in today's market.
Microsoft has been able to turn the corner. They rely less on Windows license revenue and have done a nice job with Azure.
I guess we'll see how it all works out but I think it's a smart move. Amazon is the big dog right now but I'm starting to see some backlash at how big they have become and some of their business practices. This is a smart strategy for both Walmart and Microsoft.
I'm surprised not to see Google in this deal. Walmart has been a vital partner to Google in opposing Amazon. There has been no mention of a change in that relationship. If that relationship is still intact, this is a strange menage-a-trois.
This isn't likely about datacenters. Walmart already has six mega-datacenters that haven't been online very long and many more smaller ones. Walmart is cloud-based and runs its own cloud with something like 80% of operations using their own datacenters. Their data is core to their business and they are ahead of most with their algorithms performing the pricing of their products on a store-by-store basis dependent on local sales data versus stock.
They have been criticized by investors for not selling their excess capacity and making it its own business like Amazon has. Perhaps this is part of what is going on. If they were using MS standard cloud services, it might make it easier to sell capacity.
But, I lean more towards the recent news about MS's behind-the-scenes efforts to develop a marketable checkout free retail capability. Perhaps they have talked Walmart into a partnership in that arena. The compute power necessary to provide that kind of service in stores the size of Walmart's would be massive. Like most such efforts, MS's is said to rely on cameras watching every person taking everything off of every shelf. It could only be done with on-site processing of a scale that would multiply Walmarts processing requirements. Any AI tech MS could provide to make that processing more efficient could have a huge impact on the expense.
But we need competition. If Amazon is the only viable web store and Netflix is the only viable show provider and google is the only viable search engine; then things will get stagnant, expensive, and have lousy costumer service just like the big "neighborhood" telecoms (Comcast, AT&T, etc.). The fewer the competitors, the stupider companies will get.
They are all dicks, but at least lets have competitive dicks.
Table-ized A.I.
Microsoft Bob will be their new door greeter
Table-ized A.I.
doesn't matter who wins, we lose.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Walmart should look at Nokia before partnering with Microsoft
Just add McDonald's, and you'll have the pablum trifecta.
Steps to great new content creation in the USA.
0. Keep US politics away from any creative product that has to sell globally.
1. Find some people who really understand US culture. What people enjoy watching. Movies and TV series.
Vampires and the humans they have adventures with. Billionares doing many things with lots of money. Pirates with big ships and non trivial treasure maps.
Medical dramas with drama not just more US SJW politics.
2. Find the best people in the USA who can put the above into written words for a movie, series. Get the written work is done to the best standards.
Skilled people who can write English and have everything needed to create a movie, get a TV series ready.
3. Find parts of the world that give tax credits, gov support for TV and movie making with a failed currency. Locations must look like the USA as needed.
3.5 Find funding outside the USA so the funds will go for actual content creation. No US party politics suggesting political changes to plot from US investors.
4. Find actors with no past problems in the above tax friendly English speaking nations who can look and speak like above average actors from the USA.
Make sure the actors cant made demands on future profits.
5. TV shows with plots like vampires, billionaires, pirates, medical can be created.
6. Test the resulting product on US audiences. Are the non US actors photogenic and did they have the accent skills needed?
Find new actors with much better skills if they cant create the needed content to US standards.
7. Demand nations selected as locations give further deep tax reductions and more gov support if they want to more movies and TV series made in their nations.
Walk away from any nation that hesitates to fully support the investment in their movie and TV sector.
Get their governments to understand the costs of location use, computer time, software. As part gov support their local workers.
8. Start producing content. Be aware of changes to currency and be ready to move to nations with lower costs and better tax rates at any time.
9. Do just enough work in the USA to enter US awards. That creates branding in the USA.
10. Profit.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Walmart + Microsoft. Now there's a match made in Hell.
When I hear a company is moving to Office365 all I hear is a company that is outsourcing as much of their IT department as they possibly can. Replace in-house servers and staff with a low-monthly bill and a little expenditure in some better network infrastructure to handle the increased Internet traffic. My manager opted to retire rather than complete a company transition to outsourced Help Desk support which is the only reason I still have a job. My Systems Administrator title no longer matches my workload though which is now relegated to turning things off and on for people that are too incompetent to do so themselves and remind people to enter their full email address for their logon instead of their old username. Easy money for now but it won't last. Once they get a new manager hired my position will be outsourced and I will be looking to transition to a new field that still hires employees rather than outsource every last person they can.
Maybe they will start selling to customers outside of the US