FedEx, Microsoft Are Teaming Up To Deliver Packages, Widening Gap with Amazon (cnbc.com) 45
Microsoft and FedEx announced a joint, multi-year partnership on Monday that the pair believe could help "transform commerce" through FedEx's logistics network and Microsoft's cloud. From a report: The two said their first service, called FedEx Surround, will give real-time analytics into supply chain and delivery, so companies could potentially better ship goods. The companies did not disclose the full nature of the partnership, including how much FedEx will be paying Microsoft to use its Azure cloud technology. But the partnership represents yet another example of Amazon rivals choosing to go with Microsoft's cloud offering over the cloud computing market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon and FedEx have been increasingly competitive with each other as Amazon invests heavily in building out its own shipping network. FedEx announced last year that it would end its ground-delivery contract with Amazon.
Drone delivery (Score:2)
Make it happen.
Re:Drone delivery (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, so far, my experience with Azure has been less than stellar....then again, we're mostly a RHEL shop, not sure what dim bulb voted to move a Linux shop to a MS windows cloud.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of Azure is Linux. What relevant experience with Azure can you possibly have if you don't even know this?
Re: (Score:2)
Well, whatever they run he back ends with....they sure have poor support for RHEL on the VMs....MUCH more trouble than what you experience with a MS VM.
Re: (Score:2)
You're misreading!
The above poster is from a RHEL shop, they hate Azure.
The story here is "FedEx selects Azure over AWS" just reminding us that Amazon's vans are decreasing use of FedEx.
Re: (Score:3)
Drone delivery ... Make it happen.
What I visualise when I read that: A Predator II drone with Amazon markings drops your package through the roof of your house directly into your living room safely tucked into a Mark 80 series hardened steel munitions delivery hull fitted with a JDAM guidance kit.
Probably reality: Your grumpy 2nd amendment neighbour shoots the slowly moving annoyingly buzzing quad copter drone down with his Mossberg 500 pump gun because he thinks it was sent by the deep state to spy on him and the package gets stolen by
Microsoft? Now packages can get BSODed? (Score:3)
Trusting anything needing reliability to MS sounds like an exceptionally dumb move...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, Microsoft just has a cloud. That does not mean it has the competency to make a software architecture that delivers packages well, to say nothing of reliability of their cloud. One of our execs at work is in love with Azure, but the uptime of the admin for the chosen cloud stuff is less than stellar.
Re: (Score:2)
That's going to be a "yikes" from me bro. Are you out of touch old dweebs still parroting this nonsense? SlashDot - where it's always 1997 somewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. I am right there and I have some large-enterprise numbers for what MS delivers. I cannot share them though, NDA in place. MS is still crap, just not for everything they do. No change, really.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, it's not a BSOD anymore, that doesn't mean their software is reliable or secure yet. It's not 1997, but that doesn't mean Microsoft has suddenly become a completely different company.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
How and why has Microsoft persisted with this impudently repetitive model of 'growing the business' for so long without shareholders punishing them.
Like McDonald's, they depend on a customer base that's fucking ignorant. I won't paraphrase Mencken.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
The lack of shareholder outrage may be caused by Microsoft's market cap of $1.4 Trillion and $34B in profit last year.
Despite your assertion that their business model "does not work, it has never worked", Microsoft seems to be doing ok.
Re: (Score:2)
They still have a stranglehold on the PC business, and that's still carrying them through. Their attempts to branch out in to unrelated fields invariably go horribly though.
Re: (Score:2)
Their attempts to branch out in to unrelated fields invariably go horribly though.
Xbox and Azure are obvious counter-examples.
Re: (Score:2)
A strategy don't need a 100% success rate to be a winning strategy.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious. you list a string of somewhat successful (if completely inferior) products, and then you tack on "Internet Explorer" to the end. A product nobody has ever wanted, and was only ever successful when they literally broke the law (and were convicted of doing so) to make it so, and as soon as they lost in court, their market share started to slide to the point that it's a tiny fraction of the major player in the space.
So why list that as an MS "success story"? I notice you haven't included Windows P
Re: (Score:2)
Correct citation: Edge (Chrome)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Zune wasn't compatible with PlaysForSure, Microsoft's short-lived DRM.
Re: (Score:2)
Zune wasn't compatible with PlaysForSure, Microsoft's short-lived DRM.
Why in the world would you buy DRM'd music in the first place? Until Amazon MP3 launched in 2008, the correct answer was always buy a CD and rip. Who cares about the "ecosystem?" The Zune was a nice music player.
This is innovation? (Score:2)
will give real-time analytics into supply chain and delivery, so companies could potentially better ship goods.
They're not doing that now??? Amazon/AWS has been doing that for over a decade, their third party vendors get that service simply for selling on Amazon.com. If FedEx's service is really that primitive then i can see why Amazon prefers to develop their own delivery infrastructure.
quadrupal (Score:2)
I just sent a 20oz package to Europe and it cost me $24.50 first class. A 200lb man can fly to Europe for less than $1000 usually, why does it cost the equivalent of $3920 to send the same weight in packages ?
I realize there are delivery costs at each end but the packages should be far cheaper to fly. USPS must be doing a lot to spread its USO costs (though USPS has no USO to Europe !)
Trump says that the USPS should quadruple its package delivery prices. That sounds like a recipe for more competitors to e
Re: (Score:3)
Trump says that the USPS should quadruple its package delivery prices. That sounds like a recipe for more competitors to enter the market and cherry pick the best routes.
That's essentially the whole goal of the push to attack the USPS: allow private companies to acquire the most profitable routes, leaving the government to service the low volume, high cost routes (at high cost to tax payers or through subsidies to the private companies to do it) or (most likely) leave those routes unserviced at all.
Re: (Score:2)
USPS is built around "universal service" concepts like handling credit card notices to even the most rural of customers cheaply, FedEx and UPS are built around making profits in the metro areas, and specializing in doing overnight better than Priority Mail Express.
They're not the same... it's really just a government-mandated competitor trying to hold down the others rates.
Re: quadrupal (Score:2)
You have rediscovered courier service. You pay a person to fly with 40+ kgs of your stuff. It also speeds up customs inspection.
Re: (Score:3)
I once got a free vacation in Europe this way.
We had several boxes that need to be in Germany the next day. The cost to ship them was much higher than round-trip airfare plus the extra luggage fee. So I volunteered to fly to Europe, hand-deliver the boxes, take a week of vacation, and then return.
Re: (Score:2)
You have to think like Trump: the U.S.P.S has people in uniforms, they don't report up the chain of command to Trump, hence they are part of the Deep State devoted to publicizing his screwups.
Re: (Score:2)
Well known issue. I know someone who was paid to fly two large pelican cases to Australia (from Canada) because it was far cheaper than having them couriered. He just checked them as his luggage, and rented a car at the other end to drive them to the destination. Got to the destination a few days faster, and far cheaper than any courier was willing to do.
Re: (Score:2)
Your 200lb worth of 20oz packages can be split up and have to be ground-transported beyond the airport... your rate comparison leaves that out.
Ironically (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Seems to be that's when the databases moved... not ironic.
What I want to see better in Logitics. (Score:2)
Not necessarily faster shipping. But reliable shipping with timely and accurate tracking.
If I order a product and it will take 1 week to ship. I want to know where it is at the moment. A train going into Ohio. On Delivery expecting to be at my house at 3:15-3:20 pm
Nice work guys (Score:1)
In other news (Score:2)
The US. Postal System will quadruple it's package delivery prices.
I'll get the popcorn.
So that means FedEx will deliver on time (Score:2)
Does that mean FedEx will stop using the corona virus as an excuse as to why they can't deliver packages on time.
Decades of logistics and FedEx has to use a 3rd party to manager their delivery system. That's fucking inept.
Re: (Score:2)
FedEx is s a dinosaur (Score:2)
Transformation (Score:2)
Great, they're going to "transform commerce" just like Outlook transformed email. This is not a good thing.