Walmart, Microsoft sign global five-year cloud services agreement

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Future Decoded conference in Mumbai, India, February 22, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade - RTSZQQF

Walmart has signed a five-year agreement with Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider worldwide, in order to speed up its digital transformation and making shopping easier for its customers.

“Walmart is a people led, tech empowered company, and we’re excited about what this technology partnership will bring for our customers and associates. Whether it’s combined with our agile cloud platform or leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to work smarter, we believe Microsoft will be a strong partner in driving our ability to innovate even further and faster,” said Doug McMillon, chief executive, Walmart, in a statement.

Walmart is already using Microsoft services for critical applications and workloads. It is now going to look at cloud innovation projects that leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data platform solutions for a wide range of external customer-facing services and internal business applications.

“Walmart is a pioneering retailer, committed to empowering its employees and delivering the best experience for its customers wherever they are,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “The world’s leading companies run on our cloud, and I’m thrilled to partner with Walmart to accelerate their digital transformation with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365.”

Microsoft Azure is the technology company's cloud computing platform, while Microsoft 365 is its line OS subscription services that include the Office suite of products- Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Walmart recently invested big in the Indian market with a majority stake acquisition of e-commerce platform Flipkart for USD 16 billion in May.

It may also be easier for the India business as Flipkart had said last year that it would adopt Microsoft Azure as its exclusive public cloud platform.

In a joint statement, Microsoft and Walmart said  the retail company's cloud partnership would extend across Walmart’s family of brands and international businesses.

As part of the partnership, Walmart and Microsoft engineers will collaborate on the assessment, development, and support phase of moving hundreds of existing applications to cloud native architectures.

For example, to grow and enhance the online experience, the company will migrate a significant portion of walmart.com and samsclub.com to Azure, including its cloud-powered check-out.