21 ms·
Wal-Mart is telling some vendors they can’t run applications on AWS
- nargella 9y agoYears ago I read The Wal-Mart Effect. Basically it was a whole slew of industries that Walmart had dramatically affected. Things like forcing vendors to manufacture in China and building a crazy infrastructure to get 'fresh' Salmon imported from Chile. I got the impression they would turn the screws on industries to get cost savings via scale. This move seems odd.
- chiph 9y agoFastCompany had an article back in 2003 about the Vlasic gallon jar of pickles. Sales to Walmart quickly eclipsed all their other channels. And then Walmart said "We want you to lower your price." > For many suppliers, though, the only thing worse than doing business with Wal-Mart may be not doing business with Wal-Mart. https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know https://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know
- bookmarkacc 9y agoGreat article. I wish they supported their thesis that shopping at Walmart is a self harming cycle that exports jobs. Maybe by focusing on small towns.
- coldcode 9y agoI wonder if this is restraint of trade and illegal. It's as if they are telling retailers they can't sell to Walmart and Target.
- amelius 9y agoThey have good reasons if their data ends up being hosted on a competitor's systems.
- tallanvor 9y agoThere's nothing that says a company couldn't run their service on both AWS or another provider as long as they can guarantee that Wal-Mart's confidential data is not stored on AWS. Honestly, it's not an unreasonable request from a corporate security standpoint.
- disiplus 9y agoaws does not have access to that data, so it does not make sense. walmart are trusting third party with that data, but are somehow afraid that amazon would break in its own system to look at your data, something that would kill aws. i dont think that data is of that value, if it where it would be inhouse.
- throwaway2048 9y agoThey most certainly DO have access to that data, its naivety to the point of farce to suggest they don't. The real question is do they access it in compromising ways?
- dragonwriter 9y agoThis seems more like “work you do for us can't be subcontracted to <firm who we disapprove of>.” This is generally legal.
- gtirloni 9y agoNon-paywalled article: http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/06/21/wal-mart-to-vendors-get-off-amazons-cloud.html http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/06/21/wal-mart-to-v...
- elevensies 9y agoAlso http://archive.is/vJa0u http://archive.is/vJa0u [archived copy of the WSJ article.]
- eddyg 9y agoJust add /amp/ after the domain name...
- pen2l 9y ago> Amazon's rise as the dominant player in renting on-demand, web-based computing power and storage has put some competitors, such as Netflix Inc., in the unlikely position of relying on a corporate rival as they move to the cloud. Oh yeah, Netflix is on AWS. Amazon is doing pretty much everything, I expect/predict in another two years they will launch a music streaming site a la Google Music/Spotify.
- ovi256 9y agoRegarding your prediction of a music streaming service, Prime Music and Music Unlimited already exist! https://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/promotions/PrimeMusic https://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/promotions/PrimeMusic https://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/promotions/AmazonMusicUnlimited https://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/promotions/AmazonMusicUnlim... Yup, Amazon kinda sucks at marketing so many services, but who does better ?
- peteretep 9y agoI expect/predict in a couple of years that Netflix will be able to run just fine on Azure.
- rocgf 9y agoNot sure... is this a joke or... ?
- kennydude 9y ago> “Tactics like this are bad for business and customers,” Because Amazon's tactics aren't bad for business or consumers?
- midnitewarrior 9y agoGreat source of reviews, incredible convenience, massive selection of goods, huge value for membership (Amazon Instant Video included), free 2-day delivery, reasonable pricing, consumer-friendly customer service, yes, it's a nightmare? This is one of those things where you are going to have to explain to consumers why they should be outraged in order for them to realize how awful it is. By most measures, Amazon is one of the best companies for consumers to buy from.
- chriswarbo 9y ago> huge value for membership (Amazon Instant Video included) Forcing customers to support their unwanted video service by bundling it with the next-day shipping service was a completely transparent move, and every Amazon customer I know a) saw straight through it, b) doesn't use it and c) would like to stop paying for it.
- vidarh 9y agoThe vast majority of time we spend watching TV is via a FireTV box, with a good split between Amazons own video service, the Netflix app (which is very well integrated - Netflix results show up in the normal FireTV search results), and the BBC iPlayer app. With the addition of additional "channel" subscriptions I suspect we'll use it more and more.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- slowmovintarget 9y agoAye. I got Prime when we needed diaper subscriptions. Later when watching TV on the big screen would keep the little one up, Prime Video was the only way to watch a lot of things (on the PC). Want the shipping, want the video.
- opensourcenews 9y agoWal-mart, with a large IT cost center, benefits from a diverse and competitive cloud infrastructure ecosystem. More at 11.
- throwitlong 9y agoeBay owning Paypal. Paypal owning lots and lots of revenue data of eBay competitors.
- snowwolf 9y agoIs this because they actively want to discourage any revenue going Amazon's way from Wal-Mart related business activities, or because they don't trust Amazon not to look at the data hosted on their platform? If the latter, then I think that's just extreme paranoia. If there was ANY evidence of Amazon doing that it would destroy everyones trust in AWS and I suspect people wouldn't be able to move away fast enough (Which actually long term would be good for Wal-Mart).
- firebird84 9y agoBy the same token, if I were in Amazon's position, if I were to use the data, I'd make sure nobody knew about it. However, I'd then be in the unenviable position of the Enigma codebreakers, attempting to use information without the enemy knowing I had it.
- Touche 9y agoWhy would they take the risk to find out information about a competitor that they are destroying?
- Spooky23 9y agoBecause knowing when and where a trainload of toilet paper is showing up at Walmart gives Amazon stronger bargaining power and ability to hurt Walmart. If they can add a penny to the earnings or take one away from Walmart, that means bonus and stock $$$.
- jxi 9y agoThe same reason you would want to find out information about a competitor you aren't destroying? Just because you're ahead doesn't mean you should rest on your laurels.
- jxi 9y agoThe same reason you would want to find out information about a competitor you aren't destroying? Just because you're ahead doesn't mean you should rest on your laurels.
- perseusprime11 9y agoThis is stupid! Walmart is loosing it. Generally happens when you are getting ready to lose, you start becoming erratic. Everybody forgets how WalMart single handedly destroyed the mom and pop shops of America putting them out of jobs.
- samfisher83 9y agoBut they keep prices low. People can go shop at their mom and pop store, but a large majority of people want low prices. They sell 1/2 a trillion worth of stuff. They have a bigger economic impact on America than google, Facebook,Apple etc.
- noxToken 9y ago> People can go shop at their mom and pop store, but a large majority of people want low prices. People really underestimate how much of an impact this has. Here's a completely made up example. Let's say a person of a family of 4 goes grocery shopping once per week. This person buys 30 grocery items on each shopping trip. The difference between Wal-Mart and the local place might only be $0.25 per item. Is it really worth it to go somewhere else to save $0.25? No, unless you're saving $0.25 on everything you buy. At $0.25 per item with 30 items each week and 52 weeks in a year, this shopper saves $390/year or a little more than $32/month by going to Wal-Mart. $32/month is pretty meaningless to most people who command a developer's salary, but there is a sizable portion of people in the US who could really use an extra $32 each month. That's the difference between Wal-Mart compared to the local shop, and that's the reason why Wal-Mart edged these small stores out of business.
- pcunite 9y agoI shop at Walmart not so much for the monetary savings, but for the time/trip savings. It's a super center, so I can get oil for the trunk and ice-cream for the kids. Otherwise, I'd have to go to O'Reilly's then go 5 ~ 10 miles to get ice-cream, oops forgot to get eggs, think I'll get that lawn chair too etc. It's an offline Amazon. My family actually drives past regular stores because of the selection at a super center.
- raverbashing 9y agoWalmart is notorious for wanting their suppliers to run the way they want it Might be cheaper to not sell to them (though revenue might suffer)
- djhworld 9y ago> “It shouldn’t be a big surprise that there are cases in which we’d prefer our most sensitive data isn’t sitting on a competitor’s platform,” Ok sounds reasonable from an information security standpoint > Snowflake Computing Inc., a data-warehousing service, was approached by a Wal-Mart client about handling its business from the retailer, Chief Executive Bob Muglia said. The catch: Snowflake had to run those services on Azure. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- rrdharan 9y agoMicrosoft is not a competitor, Amazon is - I fail to see the implied hypocrisy?
- gadders 9y agoMaybe Bob still holds a grudge: "Some have speculated that Muglia and Ballmer disagree about the development and future of Microsoft's cloud computing platform, Windows Azure, but no details are available. So for now, at least, the departure remains somewhat of a mystery --- as is the blunt way that Ballmer handled it." http://www.computerworld.com/article/2470214/social-business/why-did-microsoft-s-steve-ballmer-publicly-oust-bob-muglia-.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2470214/social-business...
- Johnny555 9y agoHe sure has an unusual way of holding his grudge -- by porting his company's application to the company he holds the grudge against. With enemies like that, who needs friends?
- Johnny555 9y agoI don't understand your confusion? Neither Snowflake Computing or Microsoft are competitors.
- michaelbuckbee 9y agoInteresting that Netflix (biggest competitor to Amazon Prime Video) still is on AWS. Not sure who is being savvy and who is being short sighted.
- DomreiRoam 9y agoI think they have the expertise to switch to another solution quite fast and if amazon try something nefarious it would be a very bad signal to their customer and maybe will alert government bodies like the EU's Directorate-General for Competition and others. So is it possible amazon to try this? sure but I will say it's improbable.
- rockostrich 9y agoTheir CDN (which I assume is the majority of their operating costs) isn't.
- ChrisAntaki 9y ago“The best way to express it is that everything you see on Netflix up until the play button is on AWS, the actual video is delivered through our CDN,” Netflix spokesperson Joris Evers said. http://www.networkworld.com/article/3037428/cloud-computing/netflix-is-not-really-all-in-on-amazon-s-cloud.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/3037428/cloud-computing/...
- michaelbuckbee 9y agoYes. I'm aware and they do https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ - but the point remains that they're both: 1. Giving their largest competitor money 2. Relying on them not to peek at their data for competitive advantage. Which are the items that Walmart has objections with.
- Kocrachon 9y agoIs Amazon Video really a competitor? Their prime offering is shit. Hulu, to me, is a far more viable competitor. Amazon Video is only good for buying or renting. Their free offerings are terrible.
- ilamont 9y agoWal-mart has expected vendors to bow to its methods and policies for years, no matter how unreasonable or inconvenient. The carrot dangled in front of vendors: The possibility of massive nationwide sales. Now they are dealing with a much more nimble and capable competitor. Yes, Amazon has its own unreasonable policies that squeeze vendors, but at least they have reasonable tech in place and they move fast when it comes to support and service. Case in point: Applying to be a third-party seller on Amazon takes days, Wal-mart Marketplace takes 6 weeks. I am not sure if this latest Walmart policy reflects incompetence, misguided policy, dirty tricks, or a combination of the three, but it serves to push vendors away from Walmart and into Amazon's tight embrace.
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoIf Wal-Mart decrees this, put up or shut up. Welcome to business. CEO Diktats about using not using competitor services for anything whatsoever, are as old as Microsoft. Wal-mart is not in the cloud business, so I can only wonder if, as others have commented, it is about data security in AWS domain, since Wal-Mart's main competitor is Amazon. We know what Google and Facebook get up to with peoples data, why would Amazon not analyze or try similar to their customers? To have all that technical capability and not be curious about stuff would be a waste. Finally, I think it would be great for everyone (except Amazon), if wal-mart got in to the cloud. Using their leverage to create cheaper cloud would benefit us all.
- Oletros 9y ago> We know what Google and Facebook get up to with peoples data, why would Amazon not analyze or try similar to their customers? To have all that technical capability and not be curious about stuff would be a waste. Do Google, Amazon or Microsoft look at the data of their cloud offer clients? I bet that if they do and it is know their business would go to hell
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoAgree totally. I would find it hard to believe, that large well financed companies, with some of the most technically capable staff on the planet, would have the restraint to not peek.
- ajarmst 9y agoI know there's some complexity here, but let's just take a minute to marvel at the phenomena of Walmart complaining about another company's excessive dominance and potential to apply monopolistic power.
- ocschwar 9y agoAnd then using its monopoly power to demand their suppliers take action against Amazon's monopoly power. We really are slipping into the 1870s.
- greggyb 9y agoI dunno, sounds almost like competition when you put it that way.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoOur economy is based on the idea that David can defeat Goliath. Seeing two Goliaths commanding armies of Davids into each other and calling it competition is a pretty strange corruption of that idea.
- owebmaster 9y ago> Seeing two Goliaths commanding armies of Davids into each other and calling it competition is a pretty strange corruption of that idea. But it is a better "military" tactic than an economy based on David defeating Goliath.
- ajarmst 9y agoI don't think that's a very good analogy, but I'll bite. The economy doesn't really need David to have a good shot at defeating Goliath. It does need David and Goliath to compete on the same field, with the same rules, and for Goliath to not do things like corner the market on rocks. Of course, a pure market economy doesn't really have any rules like that, it's just that it can get pretty nasty if we don't have them (not to mention basic rules like 'no using babies as ammunition' and 'you're allowed to have an army, but you have to feed them'). We discovered this during the industrial revolution, and the modern liberal democracy and ideas around fair play, consumer protection, competition as an important mechanism in a market economy, etc. grew out of what we learned. Unfortunately, for some bizarre reason, we seem to be systematically dismantling most of those protections, despite knowing exactly what's going to happen. (Hint: it rhymes with 'huge, uncontrollable corporate behemoths owning all the means of production, channels of communication, and legislative agendas'). Of course, every generation seems to have its insane economic ideas. My great-grandparents had Communism. We have whatever you call the squirming progeny of identity politics brutally inseminated by Reaganomics.
- mdasen 9y agoIt looks like Morningstar has the same article, non-paywalled: https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/retail/TDJNDN_201706212496/walmart-to-vendors-get-off-amazons-cloud.html https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/retail/TDJNDN_201...
- losteverything 9y agoWalmart finds ways for vendors, suppliers, etc to cut their costs so they can pass savings on. Maybe an AWS price increase potential is a risk they dont want to take
- sksixk 9y agoWalmart Cloud Services in 3.. 2.. 1..
- EternalData 9y agoThis seems more petty than anything. Though it's strange to see just how complex Amazon has become as a company.
- snarfy 9y agoI can't read the article.
- KirinDave 9y agoThis is... Not the best? That Wal-Mart is powerful enough to dictate the internal business practice and tech decisions of it's vendor. On the other hand, Amazon is a massive immoral monster devouring the US economy and replacing it with something vaguely worse, year by year. It's rapidly approaching a "too big to be allowed to fail" status, and that's awful for Americans. Since anti-trust laws weren't written by a generation able to envison entities like this and the current political climate is that they'd rather die than appear anti-business... I guess the only entities with the power to push back against Amazon are in fact the other major corporate vendors.
- smt88 9y agoI've never heard of conglomerates being broken up, as long as they didn't have too much share of any single market. Amazon may end up like Uber: forcing competitors to upgrade their technology, but not succeeding in stamping the competitors out entirely.
- KirinDave 9y ago> I've never heard of conglomerates being broken up, as long as they didn't have too much share of any single market. Maybe that should change. But... even if we take it at face value... Name a company in the world that is competing at scale and cost with AWS. In the US, Amazon is definitely nowhere near suffering a loss of customers from Google and Microsoft's offerings. and they're securing massive contracts with key institutions in the US. There's 1 in China, I guess. That market isn't freely accessible. Cloud services providers are a New Thing but a Thing which is absolutely critical to the world market. It's utterly unregulated right now, and that's pretty crazy given how much power it has. The only thing holding AWS rates in check is the threat of competition from 2 other American companies, and the hope of securing more critical telcom and bank contracts.
- mindcrime 9y agoThere are more than two competitors to AWS when you look at "cloud" in the broader sense. First, of the "major", in addition to Microsoft and Google, you have IBM. There is also Red Hat. And beyond that, in terms of "simple VPS's" there are a TON of competitors and some of them are already starting to move "up the stack" by adding new features and services like object storage. That's not to say that AWS isn't fairly dominant at the moment, but there is enough competition to keep them honest. See, for example, how they've had to continue to lower prices on a regular basis.
- retailtech 9y agoI work in retailtech and this feeling is very common across retailers. Everyone feels like amazon is their biggest competitor and they don't want any of their money going (even indirectly) to amazon. Especially when the technology in question is supposed to help them compete better against amazon.
- jameskegel 9y agoIs "retailtech" a real term now, or is that a typo?
- retailtech 9y agoWhat would it be a typo of?
- sharemywin 9y agoThis reminds me of when pepsi bought (Pizza hut, taco bell, KFC). Still hard to find pepsi at pizza places and they spun it off in 97'.
- 013a 9y agoI'm ok with this. I think the fear of important BI data entering a competitor's platform is real. Yes, its a bit of a tinfoil hat, but if the cost of using a different platform like Azure or GCP is roughly the same... I'm fine with it. Here's an analogy. Let's say Walmart rented out space on their trucks to any company that needed it. Would Amazon be crazy to tell retailers on their platform that they can't use Walmart trucks, or they don't want Walmart trucks driving up to their loading bays? I don't think so. Corporate espionage is a real thing. Its just a bonus that Amazon is a garbage company who deserves as little business as possible.
- tdburn 9y agoAmazon does similar practises, like not selling Chromecast/apple TV etc on their site. Is this instance of AWS blockage a big deal? probably not. I wonder if it just slows down Walmarts efforts
- Ntrails 9y agoDidn't they stop stocking those things because they wouldn't run Amazon Prime by defaults or something?
- bubblethink 9y agoAmazon decided to fork Android, and create fire phone, their own app store, and a bunch of other attempts at cutting Google out. They decided to not support other streamers because they again launched their own stick. So instead of explaining to customers, or dealing with returns, about why they can't play amazon content on chromecast, they just banned chromecast from the store. And to emphasize, it's not about not stocking. No third party seller can sell a chromecast on amazon either. The upshot of that is that when you search for chromecast on amazon, you see a bunch of knock off results that look similar to chromecast, but aren't.
- swiley 9y agoI'd just like to point out, Amazon forking android is probably a good thing. You wouldn't be able to run quite a few apps like tinder without google play if it weren't for what amazon did.
- wibbleywobbley 9y agoOh no, not Tinder! What would we ever do without Tinder?
- Kocrachon 9y agoI mean, this isn't that unusual. Its the same Reason Netflix, last I checked, makes you sign up for its services on the website and you cant do it on the App. Netflix would then be required to give something like 20 something percent of its revenue to Google. If Amazon were to have to give 20% of all transactions made through any of its Apps to Google, considering Amazon runs on making no retail profit, how do you think thats going to go?
- empath75 9y agoIf libertarians don't realize that the system they're advocating for is essentially corporate feudalism, they're suckers. I'd rather have a powerful government accountable to voters than a powerful corporate oligarchy that is only accountable to shareholders.
- ancap 9y agoExcept you're imagining power in entirely the wrong place. It is the consumers who hold all the power within a free economy. Corporations only become large and profitable in a free economy when they meet the ever increasing demands of the consumers. To quote Ludwig von Mises: The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers. They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. The consumers are merciless. They never buy in order to benefit a less efficient producer and to protect him against the consequences of his failure to manage better. They want to be served as well as possible. And the working of the capitalist system forces the entrepreneur to obey the orders issued by the consumers. The consumers are no easy bosses. They are full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. They do not care a whit for past merit. As soon as something is offered to them that they like better or that is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors. With them nothing counts more than their own satisfaction. They bother neither about the vested interests of capitalists nor about the fate of the workers who lose their jobs if as consumers they no longer buy what they used to buy.
- dkarapetyan 9y agoThis is how you know you've lost. When you are more obsessed with what your competition is doing than worrying about what you're doing.
- Spivak 9y agoWould you be willing to host your critical infrastructure on your direct competitors platform? Wouldn't you be worried about them pulling the rug out from under you?
- dkarapetyan 9y agoNope.
- Animats 9y agoNot product vendors. Vendors offering a service which handles Wal-Mart data.
- petraeus 9y agoAmericans lol, want a $29 lawnmower and then turn a blind eye to the supply side of said economics.
- __d__ 9y agoI sold to Walmart for 4 years. In the beginning we believed we were lucky to become vendors. Then we realized how much stress they created. Every single year they would short pay our invoices. We would have to submit a claim with Walmart accounting. This process was completely and utterly time consuming. But the worst of it, they wouldn't pay the invoices owed until a year later. It's hard to float a $100,000 short pay as a small business. They did much more and I was surprised that they existed this way in business
- cookiecaper 9y agoI've never worked with Walmart directly, but to be fair, I experienced this kind of thing all the time as a contractor. It seems to be sort of an unspoken thing in accounting departments that you allow vendors to complain before you pay too much attention to the particularities of any given invoice. It doesn't excuse the practice and I always appreciated the clients who paid correctly and promptly, but I don't think it's limited to a specific company, and small businesses in general should be prepared for this type of short or delayed payment, from both financial and legal perspectives (credible legal backing can go a long way to establishing yourself as a vendor whose invoices are to be respected). The problem with behemoths like Walmart is that they know you're not going to be able to stand up for yourself in a meaningful way. The relationship means a lot more to the non-behemoth, for whom it may well be life and death, whereas the behemoth can probably get a replacement vendor set up within a couple of weeks. Lots of huge companies exploit such advantages aggressively; in many cases, it crosses the line between aggressive business and cost savings to outright bullying.
- randcraw 9y agoI work in the IT division of a Fortune 100 pharma. About four years ago I was astonished as a senior business director proudly bragged to us about the company's successful accounts payable strategy of paying all vendor bills as late as possible. This allowed the company to earn a higher yield on overnight investments, despite the continuing outcry from business partners. I imagine most giant corporations now behave this way, with only the little guys playing by the rules, and paying the price.
- anonacct37 9y agoEveryone seems overlook one sentence: > they can't run applications for the retailer Wal-mart doesn't really want it's data on Amazon servers. Amazon is pretty aggressive about mining any available data on competitors.
- cxseven 9y agoIf Amazon mines data from AWS that its customers expect to be private, e.g. hard drive contents or internal network traffic, that would spell its end.
- zghst 9y agoThis is a really bad tactic, even if it's just a rumor, it'd devastating. Exerting a level of control only breeds contempt, Amazon now has free leeway to gain more partners and give more AWS credits. Not to mention Walmart already has a reputation for being the bottom barrel brand, they can't compete with Amazon on price, Amazon even has leeway to increase the value of its products and services and say "we're not Walmart".
- gregatragenet3 9y agoSeems as if this is a reasonable request, which is being framed as an unreasonable one. WalMart has asked a Data-Warehousing service (via its customer) to please not do what it does - data-warehouse internal information about sales, revenue, etc - on their retail-competitor's servers. Data which could give Amazon sensitive inside information on WalMart's operations and financials.. I dono if they've made other less-reasonable requests, but the example provided in the article is completely reasonable. I always find it a ironic when I've interacted with startups which have a plan to bring some disruptive thing to market that potentially competes with Amazon or Google, and yet route all their data and communication through these platforms. :)
- kakarot 9y agoI don't use AWS, but it's not against their ToS to encrypt data at all stages, right? How does that not that solve this problem? I would hope that anyone using a cloud provider follows that practice.
- gshulegaard 9y agoHonest question, I apologize if it's stupid... But how do you guarantee encryption at all stages such that Amazon cannot snoop it when you have to do final mile encryption on hardware controlled by Amazon? I mean encryption for messenger services where each end is not controlled by a third-party is one thing...but how do you guarantee the third-party in control of the hardware responsible for performing the encryption isn't snooping? The only thing I can think of (and again this isn't my strongest area) is to not handle any data on an Amazon server that isn't already encrypted...but how does that work if you are using a service like RDS or Redshift? And even if you could work out a super complicated security-conscious solution...is it unreasonable for Walmart to not trust all it's vendors to take such extreme measures and therefore just create a general policy against the use of AWS?
- FmrAMZN_TA 9y agoYou can't (and they don't promise) encryption such that AWS can't see everything, if they were in fact malicious. This is true of every cloud. That said, it's not illegal for them to see that xxx vendor increased their storage costs/bandwidth costs by $yyy every month, and that you could look into it - without using one piece of encrypted data. Disclosure: Former AWS
- iii_3candles 9y agoSo the world's biggest capitalist economy is being reduced to two giants battling each other, after they swallow everyone else. Amazon buys Comcast. The End.
- mml 9y agostrange, but true: bought a tv on amazon, came delivered in a giant sam's club box. walmart/sam's club are current amazon merchants.
- nebabyte 9y agoWhoever wins (spoilers: Amazon), big business wins! Story of America.
- Cofike 9y agoI don't go to Walmart because of how they treat their employees, the nonsense they pull with their vendors, and now this. The thing is that I'm not actually sure if any of the alternatives engage in this kind of practice as well.
- amatecha 9y agoHuh, I feel like this story (and even moreso the comments on this post) are good reminders not to shop at Wal-Mart, at least for me.
- droithomme 9y agoIs the use of "vendors" in the title misleading? The title suggests it refers to people who are supplying WalMart with pickles and paper towels to sell. But it seems to refer to tech contracting firms who are implementing software services for WalMart. WalMart is saying they do not want their proprietary algorithms and information running on servers owned by their main competitor. That is very reasonable and sensible.
- laurentoget 9y agoBeing aws only is probably a risky strategy for any Saas vendor anyway so at least this requirement is forcing vendors to make an investment (porting their app to gcp or azure) which would make sense anyway.