Prognosis
Walgreens Teams With Microsoft as Both Wrestle Amazon Threats
- Drugstore chain inking numerous partnerships to stay ahead
- Retailer to adopt Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology in deal
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Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. is teaming with Microsoft Corp. to design new “digital health corners” for its stores, as both companies look to battle an ever-expanding Amazon.com Inc.
For Walgreens, the pharmacy giant must contend with looming competitive threats from Amazon and other upstarts looking to disrupt the drugstore business. Meanwhile, Microsoft is angling to gain ground against Amazon Web Services by offering back-end computing muscle to retail, grocery and health operators that don’t want to give more business to one of their biggest foes.