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Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

chargedretail.co.uk

11–20 of 516 posts

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#11
post #5

In Sweden Lidl is know for being suspiciously cheap, they're even playing on it in their ads here. They had a marketing stunt where a chef started a luxury pop-up restaurant and the payoff was that it was all Lidl ingredients. "You can cook good food EVEN though you're using Lidl stuff" I'm not 100% sure that's what I want of a cloud provider.

You don't want for a cloud provider a world class service that is cheap?

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#12
I don't want to sound dismissive, but I don't think their acquisition is going to be enough for them to compete with AWS.

https://www.camao.one/de-de/referenzen

Unless they have some other cards they haven't played yet, this sounds more like a headline intended for investors rather than customers.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#13
I doubt the headline properly captures their intent, the article itself is very light on details, but this quote might shine some light at it:

"Lidl’s parent company Schwarz Group is taking on Amazon by launching its own cloud computing service for third party retailers."

My guess would be that they are not aiming to compete with AWS per se, rather to offer infrastructure and services for online stores, which could possibly include having their own data centers for the service part.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#14

Ignorant American here who has never heard of Lidl/Schwarz Group before. Is there anything in their history that would show that they know how to do compute? Is their infrastructure right now really solid/better than AWS?

They are a very popular discount (I guess a bit like Walmart, but this is not a 1:1 analogy). The article mentions cloud for the retailers and 70 cloud specialists. It think this is far from AWS scale and judging by the article I’d expect they (will) offer services for European retailers rather than general purpose global cloud.

They are good in their core business, and I’m sure this means logistics, marketing, etc. but does it translate to potential operational efficiency in cloud infra I honestly don’t know. It may, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#16
I'm currently getting a 500 on the link. Here's [1] an alternative source, originally in German but put through Google Translate.

There's three things to note there: it's not Lidl itself, but the parent company doing this, and the plans were announced late last year. Also they're building out the infrastructure for internal use first and are not necessarily looking to offer a cloud to customers, though they may work with select other companies.

EDIT: I was able to load the original source just now and it claims that following an acquisition they were now offering/planning to offer this service to other retailers. I cannot find other sources (particular German ones) supporting this claim. The blog of the allegedly acquired company speaks of a "strategic partnership" and "investment" only [2].

EDIT 2: This [3] is the German source that the link on this post refers to. Unfortunately it's paywalled. The abstract claims that the acquisition is a "building block in building out their Cloud business".

[1] https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

[2] https://camao.one/blog/partnerschaft-schwarz-gruppe-heilbron...

[3] https://www.lebensmittelzeitung.net/tech-logistik/Lidl-und-K...

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#17
This seems sufficiently unlikely that I wonder if something has been lost in translation.

My guess would be that Lidl does expect to do something innovative in e-commerce (around, say, augmented reality) and is planning to offer that as a service to other retailers, hence the comparison with Amazon's strategy. I can't believe that Lidl is planning to compete with S3 or EC2.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#18
Europe, especially Germany, has this general consensus that EU needs it's inhouse large cloud providers. So think about state subsidies, preferring european partners and stuff like that.

With enough capital and will they will get to somewhere. You can be sure the political establishment likely has their back.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#19
post #5

In Sweden Lidl is know for being suspiciously cheap, they're even playing on it in their ads here. They had a marketing stunt where a chef started a luxury pop-up restaurant and the payoff was that it was all Lidl ingredients. "You can cook good food EVEN though you're using Lidl stuff" I'm not 100% sure that's what I want of a cloud provider.

You don't want for a cloud provider a world class service that is cheap?

Lidl is not world class, it’s just cheap.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#20
post #5

In Sweden Lidl is know for being suspiciously cheap, they're even playing on it in their ads here. They had a marketing stunt where a chef started a luxury pop-up restaurant and the payoff was that it was all Lidl ingredients. "You can cook good food EVEN though you're using Lidl stuff" I'm not 100% sure that's what I want of a cloud provider.

Amazon was mostly still a book-seller when they first launched AWS, stranger things have happened. For what it’s worth Lidl has a respected IT presence in the Eastern-European capital city where I currently live, I know that they invested quite heavily in that area for a few years already.
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