Short-memoried (new word 😊), or outright ignorant journalists seem to have either forgotten all about THE Amazon v Toys-R-Us saga, or have never educated themselves about ti.
To recap: at the dawn of the modern internet, when e-commerce still had a hyphen, Toys-R-Us, the Big Kahuna of toy retailing at that time, went all-in with Amazon in order to staunch the onslaught of Walmart.
Suffice it to say, it didn’t end well. For Toys-R-Us.
Amazon almost immediately started selling toys alongside them, almost always beating them in price, and with the primo sweetener of Amazon Prime.
By the time the c-suite at Toys-R-Us woke up to what was happening, it was literally too late.
Walmart, on the other hand, now has Mark Lore, who himself sold a startup to Amazon before quitting to form Jet.com, which in turn was purchased by Walmart. He now runs Walmart’s ecommerce operations.
Which mean he knows what inexplicably, Netflix seems not to care about: you cannot, and should not, compete with your marque customer.
However, ‘marque’, is in the eyes of the beholder. Just ask American Express about their former marque customer, Costco.
Walmart has been ruthlessly proactive in dealings with and against Amazon, itself a vicious competitor: it has banned all suppliers from using the Amazon cloud, AWS.
Today, news dropped that Walmart has chosen Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud.
Smart move.
Microsoft can help Walmart better compete with Amazon.
Azure has a similar global footprint to AWS, and delivers something AWS lacks: SaaS.
Most importantly, Microsoft will NEVER compete with Walmart in the retail or ecommerce space.
That alone, should be the vote of confidence Walmart needs.
I full expect Microsoft to snag more wins like this at the expense of AWS as Amazon seeks new sectors to conquer, and tramples on current allies/affiliates/partners.
© 2002 – 2018, John Obeto for Blackground Media Unlimited
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