Microsoft

Office Depot is gearing up for a successful back to school season with a new lineup of essentials for students of all ages.

Seattle – Amazon.com is heading east with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted cloud computing platform – all the way to India.

AWS will launch an “infrastructure region” in India in 2016, meaning customers there will have access to locally based hosted cloud services.

NCR’s legacy as a cash register company is long gone. The recent launch of a major retail initiative with top technology partners has positioned the company as an enabler of omnichannel execution.

NCR launched what it is calling a commerce hub with support from some of the biggest names in retail technology – Microsoft, Intel, Cisco – that is designed to give retailers new digital capabilities to bridge the physical and digital world.

E-commerce solutions provider Digital River Inc. has named a Groupon executive as its next CFO.

Digital River has announced that Hoke Horne has joined the company as chief financial officer. In this role, Horne, who has more than 20 years of financial experience, will be responsible for the company’s accounting, finance, tax, corporate development and enterprise operations activities.

Membership buying club DirectBuy Inc. takes an unusual approach to retailing. It offers paid members the chance to directly purchase goods from manufacturers and wholesalers, without paying retail markup

So perhaps it is to be expected that 50-plus-store DirectBuy, which also offers online and in-home shopping options to its 250,000-plus members, approaches business intelligence (BI) a little differently, as well.

Hoffman Estates, Ill. – Kmart is shaking up its marketing operation with moves including the recent appointment of former DSW Chief Marketing Officer Kelly N. Cook as its chief marketing officer. There was never a formal announcement, but Cook’s LinkedIn profile indicates that she joined Kmart in that position in April.

My latest retail IT-related travels took me to the Retail Experience Center at Microsoft headquarters (in Redmond, Washington), where I toured a simulated shopping mall environment that demonstrated a variety of innovative ways the company is using technology to enhance customer engagement for retailers.  Here are the three most interesting solutions from that visit:

A Beacon for Coffee Drinkers

Dick’s Sporting Goods named veteran consumer packaged goods finance executive Teri List executive vice president and CFO to oversee the retailer’s finance and legal organizations.