San Francisco, Jan 14 (IANS): As retailers fast embrace digital solutions to help better understand their customers and deliver an agile and resilient supply chain, Microsoft has introduced the private preview of "Cloud for Retail".

Microsoft Cloud for Retail aims to connect experiences across the end-to-end shopper journey with integrated and intelligent capabilities.

"By bringing together disparate data sources across the retail value chain, we will enable retailers to realise the true value of their data by enriching core business processes and turning data into actionable insights," said Shelley Bransten, Corporate Vice President, WW Retail and Consumer Goods Industry.

The retail-specific cloud service will centre around driving accelerated time to value by unlocking the power of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Advertising.

"Our rich partner ecosystem will extend the value of the platform with retail-specific solutions to address the industry's most urgent challenges, and future-proofing retail organisations to proactively be ready for what's next," she said in a blog post on Wednesday.

The company said that it is designing Microsoft Cloud for Retail to give people the flexibility to adopt the capabilities they need to address their most pressing business needs.

"If 2020 taught us anything, it was that no business is resilient to everything. But those that had laid their digital tracks early were better positioned to recover, and in some cases, even speed ahead," Bransten noted.

In fact, one retail expert said that we had "witnessed a 10-year evolutionary leap toward digital" in retailing, she informed.