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Briefing
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- 4.co – Retail giant Walmart and technology firm Microsoft will open joint ‘cloud factory’ office, 4.co, in Austin, Texas in 2019
- Cloud Computing Focus – 30 engineers from Walmart and Microsoft to work together on new cloud applications as well as migrate thousands of Walmart’s existing internal business applications to Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure
- Five-Year Partnership – Joint office is part of Walmart and Microsoft’s five-year strategic partnership announced in July 2018, which aims to transform Walmart’s retail operations with digital technologies to create better shopping experiences for customers and empower employees
- Existing Initiatives – Include deploying thousands of sensors on refrigeration and freezer systems at Walmart stores which helps retail giant to save energy and prevent product loss, internal chatbots that enable employees to find mentors and manage supplier agreements, and natural language processing platform that can process 40 terabytes of unstructured text, providing real-time insights to support business operations
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Accelerator
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Market Disruption
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Business Model and Practices
Business Model
and Practices
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Sector
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Information Technology, Wholesale and Retail Trade
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Organization
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Microsoft Corp., Walmart Stores Inc.
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Source
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Ho, V., "A new Walmart ‘cloud factory’ will accelerate digital innovation, boost business efficiency",
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"Walmart establishes strategic partnership with Microsoft to further accelerate digital innovation in retail,"
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Hensel, A., "Microsoft and Walmart to open joint engineering office in Austin as part of cloud partnership",
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Krazit, T., "Microsoft and Walmart will kick off their cloud partnership with joint engineering center in Austin",
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AcceleratingBiz analysis
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Original Publication Date
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November 5, 2018
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