Microsoft today announced that it has signed a three-year deal with Albertsons to make Azure their preferred public cloud. Albertsons Companies is one of the largest food and drug retailers in the United States, so this is a significant deal. This news comes a little over a week after Microsoft announced similar cloud agreements with Kroger, America’s largest grocery retailer and Walgreens Boots Alliance, the largest retail pharmacy destination across the U.S. and Europe.

Retailers are selecting Microsoft Azure over Amazon’s AWS as Amazon has been opening up its own retail stores (Amazon Go) and own product brands that directly compete with these retailers. These retail companies do not want to indirectly support their own competition as AWS generates most of the profit for Amazon.

“Albertsons chose Azure to be its primary cloud because of its experience with big companies, history with large retailers and strong technical capabilities, and because it isn’t a competitor,” said Anuj Dhanda, chief information officer of Albertsons.

In addition to using Microsoft Cloud, Albertsons will also deploy Microsoft 365 for its thousands of employees across the country.

Source: CNBC