Kohl’s cozies up closer to Amazon: Just weeks after announcing it would welcome Amazon smart home experience centers at a number of its department stores, Kohl's is adding Amazon item return services in 82 locations starting next month. It's a continuation of Amazons's brick-and-mortar strategy, which took a big leap forward with the acquisition of Whole Foods, and could conceivably lead to a purchase of Kohl's.
Here are some key details from the announcement:
“We are thrilled to launch this unprecedented and innovative concept, allowing customers to bring in their unpackaged Amazon returns to Kohl’s and we will pack them, ship them, and return them to Amazon for free,” said Richard Schepp, Chief Administrative Officer. “This is a great example of how Kohl’s and Amazon are leveraging each other's strengths – the power of Kohl’s store portfolio and omnichannel capabilities combined with the power of Amazon’s reach and loyal customer base.”
POV: There are a number of caveats to consider. First, the 82 Kohl's stores that will feature Amazon returns are all in Chicago and Los Angeles. One would expect, however, the initial rollout is a test run for adding the service to most or all of Kohl's stores eventually. Also, the announcement notes that "eligible" Amazon items will be accepted as returns; it's not clear what the limitations are, but for free, who can complain?
For large retailers like Kohl's, increasing foot traffic is crucial even as they build out online revenue streams. Amazon return centers certainly could drive that foot traffic and result in more in-store sales.
Kohl's has had more success than other department chains in adjusting to omnichannel realities. It also has much larger stores than Whole Foods, raising possibilities for Amazon that a typical Whole Foods store footprint cannot. Acquiring Kohl's, which has a market capitalization of about $7 billion, would be practically trivial for Amazon. While not a lock, an eventual deal looks like a strong possibility.
Hitachi creates Vantara unit for digital business: There is a new—in a sense—player in big data and digital transformation consulting services, with Hitachi's launch of Vantara, a new unit that combines Hitachi Data Systems, Hitachi Insight Group and Pentaho. Here's how Hitachi describes the opportunity for Vantara and customers:
The market opportunity for mission-critical data solutions has never been greater. Data has become a business's greatest asset—if they can extract actionable insights from it. Data holds the key to new revenue streams, better customer experiences, improved market insights and lower costs of doing business. However, a comprehensive offering has yet to emerge that combines both OT and IT expertise to uncover its true potential—until now.
Hitachi Vantara will continue to provide superior infrastructure and analytics technologies that enterprises rely on for their mission-critical data in their data centers, in the cloud and at the edge of new innovations. The new company is targeting the emerging IoT market opportunity, in which there is no clear winner yet.
Hitachi has developed its own IoT platform, Lumada, which will be part of Vantara. The new entity is going after high-end business, focusing on the global Fortune 1000.
POV: Hitachi may have big ambitions for Vantara but the likes of IBM and Dell EMC are competing for the same business. Where Hitachi says it has an advantage is with its operational technology background, which Vantara engagements will couple with IT know-how. By any measure, Vantara is a big move by a big player, and one that bears watching.
Oracle delivers SPARC M8 systems, clarifies Solaris's future: A couple weeks in advance of OpenWorld, Oracle has announced a new series of servers based on the SPARC M8 microprocessor. It also said it plans to support the Solaris OS until at least 2034.
SPARC M8 chips include advancements for software-on-silicon based security measures; 2x faster encryption than x86 systems and SPARC M7; and superior performance for Oracle database and Java workloads compared to x86 and M7, according to the announcement:
"Oracle has long been a pioneer in engineering software and hardware together to secure high-performance infrastructure for any workload of any size," said Edward Screven, chief corporate architect, Oracle. "SPARC was already the fastest, most secure processor in the world for running Oracle Database and Java. SPARC M8 extends that lead even further."
POV: Oracle's hardware revenue fell 5 percent year-over-year in its first quarter to $943 million. But it's doubtful Oracle has true hopes for on-premises hardware sales as a growth story. Rather, it is betting that innovation in the SPARC platform can give its cloud services a performance and efficiency edge.
As for Solaris, the lengthy support commitment should please customers with legacy Solaris workloads, but it's not clear how many resources Oracle will pour into the OS going forward. Sharp eyes at the Register noted that a number of OpenWorld sessions focus on moving Solaris workloads to the cloud—presumably, its own.
AWS adds per-second billing: The cloud pricing wars just got a new wrinkle, with Amazon Web Services' introduction of per-second billing. Here's how AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr describes the value proposition in a blog post:
Some of our more sophisticated customers have built systems to get the most value from EC2 by strategically choosing the most advantageous target instances when managing their gaming, ad tech, or 3D rendering fleets. Per-second billing obviates the need for this extra layer of instance management, and brings the costs savings to all customers and all workloads.
While this will result in a price reduction for many workloads (and you know we love price reductions), I don’t think that’s the most important aspect of this change. I believe that this change will inspire you to innovate and to think about your compute-bound problems in new ways.
Per-second billing goes into effect in all AWS regions on October 2, for Linux instances "that are newly launched or already running," Barr wrote. Amazon is also requiring a one-minute minimum charge per instance.
POV: The move is both good for AWS customers as well as AWS, if it can recycle instances faster and loan them out more often per minute, says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller. "It's like the Frankfurt airport Sheraton, which usually has 120 to 130 percent utilization, because people check in and check out of the same rooms multiple times in 24 hours," he says.
Per-second pricing isn't currently available on other major clouds, but you can expect AWS's competitors to follow suit soon.