Following Amazon’s recent Whole Foods acquisition, it seems that some large retailers are already looking to move away from Amazon Web Services, a situation that may eventually benefit Microsoft’s Azure platform. According to a recent report from CNBC, Target is one of these big retailers that no longer wants to be an AWS customer.
“Microsoft Azure is among the rival cloud vendors vying to nab Target’s cloud business, said the sources, who asked not to be named because the plans are confidential. Google and Oracle are also beefing up their cloud offerings,” explained CNBC, adding that the discount retailer plans to “aggressively move e-commerce activities, mobile development and operations away from AWS through the end of the year and probably into 2018.”
A Target spokesperson refused to share details about the company’s plans, but said that “we currently use multiple cloud service providers and will continue to do so.” According to a previous report from the Wall Street Journal, Wal-Mart is also currently telling its vendors to not run their apps and services on AWS, recommending a mix of on-premise servers and other cloud infrastructures (including Azure) instead.
Microsoft remains a distant follower to Amazon in the cloud infrastructure market, but the Redmond giant made some interesting moves this year to remain competitive. Two months ago, the company acquired cloud management solution Cloudyn, gaining an expertise in optimizing hybrid cloud environments including both Azure and AWS.
