The Winners And Losers In The Walmart Versus AWS Row

We have not heard much about the edict Walmart issued a in late June, where it announced technology companies and vendors could not run their applications on Amazon Web Services.

That is, if they wanted to do business with the retail giant.

And while this rivalry between the two of the biggest names in the industry has already affected trucking and forklift contractors, the real damage in this chess game is being done to small vendors and technology providers.

These are the companies that are being forced to redevelop their services for providers like Microsoft Azure of Google Cloud, or risk losing Walmart’s business.

Easier said than done, this, as even if these firms decide to containerize their workloads for portability, it would still entail considerable development effort to refocus their efforts to other public cloud platforms.

Same is true for large vendors — even though they might better be able to cope with this development, due to having access to bigger resource pools. But even they will have to make choices, ultimately.

Which means that the only clear winners in this situation are Microsoft and Google.

Both companies have probably already reached out to the affected suppliers and vendors, and would be pleased to wrest market share away from Amazon, which according to the most recent estimates holds approximately 44% of the public cloud provisioning market.

Microsoft and Google, both, are in a position to gain much, if they make some quick moves.

All that said, there still is much speculation in the media about the larger effects of this move on both Walmart and AWS.

Perhaps the most significant factor in all this, particularly in North America, is that other retailers follow where Walmart goes. And according to reports, many have already started requesting their technology providers to get off of Amazon Web Services in favor of other cloud platforms.

Sure, it remains to be seen who is the ultimate winner in this Amazon versus Walmart war, and this is a question that only time will answer.