Walmart and Microsoft team up for five year strategic cloud deal

Walmart is making Microsoft its preferred cloud provider – with machine learning and artificial intelligence a key focus. The two companies – both rivals of Amazon – have signed a five year strategic partnership deal with Walmart looking to utilise ‘the full range of Microsoft’s cloud solutions’, as the retailer put it. A ‘significant portion’ of walmart.com and samsclub.com will be migrated to Azure, including its cloud-powered checkout, while Walmart and Microsoft engineers will collaborate on moving hundreds of existing applications to cloud-native architectures. The press materials included an interesting paragraph focusing on Walmart’s culture and how Microsoft will play within it. “Walmart continues to foster a curious, collaborative, accountable, and agile culture to position the company for further growth,” the company notes. “To do that, it’s critical to have tools that encourage those skills and traits.