LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Amazon Inc., the largest retailer in the world, announced on Tuesday, Nov. 29 that its software would draw on its retail expertise in an effort to boost sales to businesses and remain the largest cloud-computing provider ahead of Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google.
Taking lessons learned over years of delivering online orders to shoppers’ doorsteps, Amazon’s cloud division unveiled a service — called AWS Supply Chain — to alert businesses when inventories are running low, and help them address supply issues that were chronic during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Moving up to the cloud
At its annual Las Vegas conference, the cloud unit also showed off AWS Clean Rooms, which allows businesses to tailor ads to customers while maintaining their privacy, among other applications. Amazon in recent years has developed its own major advertising business.
The services are part of Amazon’s long-time strategy to develop functions for its e-commerce arm and then offer them to other companies. At the same time, Amazon’s cloud has lost out on sales to brick-and-mortar retailers which are reluctant to hire a company that is also their e-commerce competitor.
Other new services it announced include Amazon Omics for genomic analysis and Amazon Security Lake, which helps businesses assemble data from cybersecurity vendors and other sources.
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Reuters contributed to this report.
