Last year, Target announced that they would be ending their relationship with Amazon and bringing their e-commerce operations in-house. I only assume that many e-commerce platforms and integration partners were courting the large retailer, touting their services. Yesterday, the retailer announced the full list of vendors that will be involved in the nearly 2 year project:
- Sapient Corp., based in Boston, as the lead partner and integrator,
- International Business Machines Corp., based in Armon, NY, which will provide the multichannel e-commerce platform,
- Oracle, based in Redwood City, Calif., which will provide the database platform,
- Endeca Technologies Inc., based in Cambridge, Mass., which will provide search and navigation functionality,
- Autonomy Corp., based in San Francisco, which will provide content and digital asset-management functionality,
- Sterling Commerce Inc., Dublin, Ohio, which will provide global inventory visibility and cross-channel order-management functionality, and
- Huge Inc.,based in Brooklyn, NY, will provide visual and interaction design.
This is going to be an interesting project to watch and I can’t wait to see what Target and their vendors come up with. A highly visible, successful brand that is already known for a pleasant in-store shopping experience will have a very high bar to meet as re-platform their e-commerce offering.