Walmart has entered into a strategic five-year agreement with Microsoft, choosing the tech giant as its preferred cloud provider to accelerate its digital transformation and make shopping faster and easier for its customers around the world. Through this partnership, Walmart has tapping into the full range of Microsoft’s cloud solutions.

The retailer is already using Microsoft services for critical applications and workloads and is now embarking on a broad set of cloud innovation projects that leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data platform solutions for a wide range of external customer-facing services and internal business applications. Walmart said the tech will significantly accelerate its ability to execute in three key areas: digital transformation, innovation, and changing how the company works. In this respect, Walmart is implementing a phased rollout of Microsoft 365 providing its employees with collaboration and productivity tools including Microsoft Workplace Analytics, Microsoft Stream, and Microsoft OneDrive.

Walmart and Microsoft engineers will collaborate on the assessment, development, and support phase of moving hundreds of existing applications to cloud native architectures. For example, to grow and enhance the online experience, the company will migrate a significant portion of walmart.com and samsclub.com to Azure, including its cloud-powered checkout, which Walmart said will enable it to grow with rising customer demand and reach more global markets than ever before.

“Walmart is a pioneering retailer, committed to empowering its employees and delivering the best experience for its customers wherever they are,” said Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella. “The world’s leading companies run on our cloud, and I’m thrilled to partner with Walmart to accelerate their digital transformation with Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365.”