Microsoft Corp. today announced the launch in preview of its second vertical cloud, and this time it’s targeting retailers with the promise of helping them to unlock their data and transform it into actionable insights.

The Microsoft Cloud for Retail comes about two months after the launch of its first vertical cloud platform for healthcare providers and bundles many of the same offerings. They include Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, and specifically retailers will also get access to the Microsoft Advertising suite.

Microsoft’s healthcare cloud also came with various templates and connectors to help customers in that industry deal with structured and unstructured data, and the retail cloud offers a similar package.

According to Microsoft, the Microsoft Cloud for Retail is meant to deliver an “end-to-end shopper journey” by combining data from disparate sources into a common data model that customers can explore for insights.

Shelley Bransten, corporate vice president of WW Retail & Consumer Goods Industry, said in a blog post that retailers were dealing with a “data explosion,” amassing petabytes of information on customers who are increasingly shopping online. She said this data could potentially hold enormous value for retailers, but it’s difficult to separate the signal from the noise because 90% of it is unstructured, without labels or metadata to describe them.

“Today we’re helping retailers unlock the power of that data,” Bransten said. “That can range from predictive analytics that makes intelligent recommendations to customers, to connecting with shoppers within a store or web site, to attacking fraud and shrinkage.”

Retailers will also be able to tap into some new, retail-oriented features in the Dynamics 365 Commerce app that provides back-office, in-store, call center and e-commerce capabilities. In a recent update, Microsoft announced it’s making B2B commerce a central part of the app, so it now offers both B2B and B2C commerce on a single platform. The Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service apps have also been integrated with the Commerce app.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that 2020 was the year of cloud verticalization for all of the major vendors, and that this trend is set to continue into this year. But he said the key ingredient of vertical clouds will be “specific automation assets” that can be used to create a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, those are still lacking.

“For now, Microsoft’s retail cloud is still short of those vertical software assets,” Mueller said. “It looks like Microsoft is kicking off with the integration of horizontal products instead. That’s a fair starting point, but it needs more vertical depth and differentiation to succeed in the market place.”

Microsoft hasn’t said anything yet about pricing for its retail cloud, but the Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare costs $95 per user per month, so it’s likely to be similar.

Microsoft promised at its Build 2020 in May that it would launch cloud platforms across several industry verticals in the future, so there may well be more to come.

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