Aussie retailer Coles Group has signed a five-year partnership with Microsoft for cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.
Coles will be using Microsoft's cloud, AI, and Edge computing offerings to develop an AI-as-a-Service platform and to modernize its IT estate.
Additionally, Coles will use Microsoft's offerings, such as Azure OpenAI Service, to give customers a more personalized experience. The agreement is hoped to increase "diversified revenue streams" for Coles by increasing the company's reach.
The two companies will also work on Coles' "Intelligent Edge Backbone" Edge computing solution to help connect and manage IoT devices.
“We are delighted to refresh our longstanding partnership with Microsoft to drive our strategic priorities and create more value for our customers, team members, suppliers, and shareholders,” said John Cox, CTO at Coles. “Microsoft’s proven expertise and innovative solutions will help us build the digital foundations and enablers that will empower us in our purpose of helping Australians to live and eat better every day.”
Steven Worrall, managing director at Microsoft ANZ, said: “We’re thrilled to deepen our partnership with Coles, a true leader in Australian retail. Together, we’ll leverage Microsoft’s cloud, AI, and edge computing capabilities to drive meaningful transformation, helping Coles stay ahead in an ever-evolving, customer-first landscape."
Coles and Microsoft's partnership commenced in 2019. Since then, Coles has migrated more than 70 percent of its data into the cloud.
Coles has previously been a customer of Oracle. In a 2021 blog post, Saurav Sachdev, head of data at the company, wrote that Coles had Oracle Exadata hardware sitting in its data centers containing "petabytes of data," noting that it was his team's job to migrate that data to Microsoft's cloud.
The company teamed up with Palantir Technologies earlier this year on a "complex time and motion system, and team member rostering capability system," which has helped them reduce team member churn by 25 percent by allegedly making sure employees work the hours they want.
