3M goes all-in on AWS cloud migration


Bobby Hellard

18 Feb, 2020

American conglomerate 3M is moving its enterprise IT infrastructure to AWS’ cloud infrastructure as part of a digital transformation project.

The firm said it will migrate systems for accounting, manufacturing, e-commerce and more into the tech giant’s cloud platform, in a bid to improve its global operations.

3M, formally the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is a 100-year-old US corporation that provides a diverse range of services in markets such as healthcare, automotive, manufacturing and a number of other areas.

Its 96,000 global employees use 51 different technology platforms, according to the company. Moving forward, its plans are to tap into AWS’ portfolio of services, such as machine learning, analytics, storage, security and databases to streamline its business processes and meet changing customer demands.

“AWS, with its proven experience and highly performant global infrastructure, will deliver the agility, speed, and scalability 3M needs to launch new business processes and service models,” said John Turner, CIO at 3M.

“We look forward to expanding our use of AWS’s portfolio of services, including analytics and machine learning, to gain greater insights and become an even more agile company in the cloud.”

This is one of a number of large organisations to go all-in on AWS over the last couple of years, following the likes of the NFL and BP. The cloud giant is also locked in a legal battle with the Pentagon over its decision to award its JEDI contract to Microsoft – which is seen as Amazon’s closest rival in the cloud space.

In January, a Goldman Sachs survey suggested that Microsoft had an edge over AWS, with IT executives suggesting cloud win the so-called ‘cloud wars’ over the next three years. However, Amazon’s cloud division is continuing to score heavy with big organisations and its legal challenge has seen Microsoft’s JEDI contract paused.