Wesfarmers OneDigital has selected AWS as a "strategic" cloud provider for group operations for the next five years.
OneDigital is Wesfarmers' data and digital division, and also oversees the OnePass subscription program and the group's shared data asset, OneData.
Under the agreement, AWS will help Wesfarmers set up an AWS Skills Guild for every division within the company. Training is set to be offered to technical and business teams, with a goal to train and certify 500 employees.
Managing director Nicole Sheffield outlined the agreement at the AWS Sydney Summit on Tuesday.
Sheffield said OneDigital “has a pretty powerful digital footprint” with “over 1.5 million digital transactions per month and over 210 million digital interactions per month”.
“We realised that we needed to be where our customers were and where our customers were [is] increasingly shopping with us online and in-store, but we really needed to build out our ecosystem," she said.
At the centre of its proposition is data, which Sheffield said "helps us understand our customers and build better solutions and products for [them]."
She also said OneDigital needed to “continually add features [to OnePass] and pivot all the time to drive value to our subscribers and to do that we really needed a cloud partner, which is where AWS came in.”
Sheffield said the business “created an adaptable platform built on AWS that allows us to collate and integrate all of those critical data sources.”
It implemented a range of AWS services covering “compute, storage, databases, security, and compliance".
"That actually allowed us to build quickly and actually not worry about infrastructure management," Sheffield said.
“At the core of the OnePass platform is Amazon MSK [managed streaming for Apache Kafka]. We build responsive systems using an event-driven architecture and this has helped us manage our infrastructure and simplify out of our operations. This is really important for our developer, and DevOps teams," she said.
“We're able to gather these customer insights quickly using triggers to respond to our customers, enabling us to really accelerate our production.
Sheffield added part of deciding to partner with AWS meant access to “ready-made, high-quality engineering talent and delivery talent pools.”
AWS is used by Kmart, Target, Officeworks, Catch and Flybuys - all owned or part-owned by Wesfarmers.
OnePass which will continue to expand with Officeworks expected to join later this year.
Updated 6/4 at 9.30am: AWS originally stated that it was named "preferred" cloud provider by Wesfarmers. It has since revised the characterisation of the agreement to "strategic" cloud provider. The story has been updated accordingly.
