Best Buy in new partnership with Amazon's cloud computing division

Best Buy Co. Inc. is collaborating with a well-known cloud services platform to further apply cloud technology across its retail operations.

The consumer electronics giant is selecting Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider for cloud infrastructure services, as well as its strategic partner for developing cloud engineering talent. Through this collaboration, Best Buy intends to support the rapid innovation of its customer experiences.

Best Buy has already been utilizing AWS cloud technology in its enterprise. For example, using advanced cloud technologies, part of which were already supported by AWS, Best Buy was able to deploy a curbside pickup service in two days at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The service is still in use.

Best Buy intends to apply AWS compute, storage, database, and security services to create new experiences for its customers, including the ability to interact virtually with experts to receive live demos of physical products. The retailer will also leverage AWS cloud capabilities to support digital initiatives, such as its existing 24/7 AWS-powered chatbot that offers tech expertise to members of its Totaltech program.

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.

In addition, the collaboration will give Best Buy’s technologists access to AWS Training and Certification’s comprehensive cloud training curriculum and resources. 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.

“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 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, VP and CTO of Amazon. “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.”