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."

Comments

Hilarious

[thundercattt]

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

Re:Hilarious

[known_coward_69]

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

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

Re: Hilarious

[aaronb1138]

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

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

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

Re: Hilarious

[Darinbob]

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

Re: Hilarious

[raftpeople]

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

In terms of market share for ecommerce, Amazon is around 50% and Walmart is around 4% (just behind Apple). In terms of infrastructure and capabilities for ecommerce style fulfillment (e.g. high volume of small orders), Walmart is even further behind. It's a completely different animal than the types of facilities they built to support their stores. In the US, Walmart has around 14 centers either built or in process, Amazon has 114. Even if Walmart built out 114 facilities today, it takes time to optimize and figure out what works and what doesn't.

I assume Walmart will keep dumping money into catching up with Amazon and eventually will probably be a solid #2 competitor, but it will take a long time.

Technology vs. Buying

[captaindomon]

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

Re:Technology vs. Buying

[jedidiah]

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

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

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

Re:Technology vs. Buying

[whoever57]

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

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

MOAR CONTENT

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

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

Part of a bigger trend...

[aaronb1138]

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.

Walmart has other problems

[reboot246]

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.