Best Buy Selects AWS as Its Strategic Cloud Provider

Rhea-AI Summary

Best Buy has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider to enhance its digital offerings. This strategic partnership aims to accelerate Best Buy's cloud migration and innovation in customer experiences. AWS will provide cloud tech and training, supporting the hiring of 1,000 new technology employees, with an emphasis on diversity. The collaboration will enhance Best Buy's agile development model, enabling the company to respond quickly to evolving retail demands. Best Buy is committed to creating world-class digital experiences for its customers.

Positive

• Strategic partnership with AWS to enhance digital experiences and cloud operations.
• Hiring 1,000 new tech employees, focusing on diversity.
• AWS training resources will boost skills development for existing teams.

Negative

• None.

Consumer electronics retailer teams up with AWS to further unleash the innovative work of its technology teams and advance its mission to create world-class digital experiences for its customers

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Today, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced that Best Buy Co., Inc. (NASDAQ: BBY) has selected AWS as its preferred cloud provider for cloud infrastructure services and its strategic partner for developing cloud engineering talent. This collaboration will help Best Buy further apply cloud technology across its retail operations and support the rapid innovation of its customer experiences and the work of its teams to create world-class digital experiences that can enrich the lives of millions.

“Our purpose to enrich lives through technology has never been more important, and this new partnership with AWS is another step in our commitment to deliver outstanding experiences for our customers,” said Brian Tilzer, Chief Digital and Technology Officer of Best Buy Co., Inc. “Not only will AWS’s cloud technologies help us in this work, but in combination with our culture of innovation and reinvention, they will give our teams invaluable development opportunities as we continue to grow our skilled teams and remain one of the best places for amazing technology talent to thrive.”

Best Buy—recently named one of Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators—is known for its culture of innovation and use of technology and analytics to better serve customers, including responding with significant flexibility to external challenges. For example, using advanced cloud technologies, part of which were already supported by AWS, Best Buy was able to deploy an industry-leading curbside pickup experience in just two days at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Almost two years later, this service continues to allow customers to safely pick up technology products essential to working and learning from home.

Using the breadth and depth of AWS Cloud capabilities, Best Buy’s product teams and engineers continue to transform the way people buy technology. By applying AWS compute, storage, database, and security services, Best Buy creates new experiences for its customers, including the ability to interact virtually with experts to receive live demos of physical products. Combining AWS’s advanced cloud technologies with Best Buy’s company-wide agile development model fuels new offerings such as Best Buy’s Totaltech program. Totaltech provides members with access to 24x7 tech expertise delivered via an AWS-powered chatbot and a heightened sense of confidence that their tech support needs can be resolved quickly.

“Best Buy is transforming the way people buy technology and is using AWS’s comprehensive set of cloud services to accelerate its innovation. Thousands of retailers like Best Buy continue to trust AWS as their cloud provider of choice because of our ability to help them remain agile and innovate faster to meet the demands of the constantly evolving retail landscape,” said Werner Vogels, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Amazon.com, Inc. “Our shared culture of customer obsession and innovation will help us work together to ensure that the cloud will benefit every customer across every aspect of their business.”

Through this strategic collaboration with AWS, Best Buy will also accelerate the pace of its cloud migration and implementation of its cloud-first strategy, beginning with moving additional retail operations workloads from on-premises data centers to AWS. Moving forward, Best Buy will expand its use of AWS capabilities and AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that makes it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on AWS, to increase resilience, gain agility, and accelerate innovation.

In addition, the collaboration will give Best Buy’s growing teams of skilled technologists access to AWS Training and Certification’s comprehensive cloud training curriculum and resources. These training resources will give Best Buy teams new skills development opportunities and help Best Buy achieve its goal of being one of the best companies to work for, especially for technical talent. Best Buy has committed to hiring 1,000 new employees to its technology team—with 30% of them being diverse, specifically Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and women—and has growing tech and data science hubs in Atlanta, Boston, Seattle, and Minneapolis.

About Amazon Web Services

For over 15 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud offering. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has more than 200 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 84 Availability Zones (AZs) within 26 geographic regions, with announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones and eight more AWS Regions in Australia, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Amazon strives to be Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company, Earth’s Best Employer, and Earth’s Safest Place to Work. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Career Choice, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, Alexa, Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Studios, and The Climate Pledge are some of the things pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit amazon.com/about and follow @AmazonNews.

About Best Buy

Best Buy’s purpose is to enrich lives through technology. Best Buy does that by leveraging its unique combination of tech expertise and human touch to meet its customers’ everyday needs, whether they come to a Best Buy store, BestBuy.com, the Best Buy App or invite us into their homes. For more information, visit corporate.bestbuy.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220203005266/en/

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FAQ

What new partnership did Best Buy announce regarding cloud services?

Best Buy announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider.

How will AWS support Best Buy's business?

AWS will help accelerate Best Buy's cloud migration, provide cloud technologies, and training for its tech teams.

How many new employees is Best Buy planning to hire?

Best Buy plans to hire 1,000 new employees for its technology team.

What is Best Buy's commitment to diversity in hiring?

Best Buy intends for 30% of the new hires to be diverse, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and women.

What is the significance of the partnership between Best Buy and AWS?

The partnership aims to enhance Best Buy's digital customer experiences and improve its cloud engineering capabilities.