45 Years of Wal-Mart History: A Technology Time Line

For nearly half a century Wal-Mart has led the information technology charge to cope with growth and fuel its global expansion.

By Thomas Wailgum
Wed, October 17, 2007

CIO — Sam Walton's self-described distrust of computers didn't keep him from building his company into a global leader of information technology innovation.

1962

First Wal-Mart opens in Rogers, Ark.

1975

With more than 125 stores and $340.3 million in sales, Wal-Mart leases an IBM 370/135 computer system to maintain inventory control for all merchandise in the warehouse and distribution centers and to prepare income statements for each store.

Electronic cash registers in more than 100 Wal-Mart stores record point-of-sale (POS) data to maintain inventory.

1977

Wal-Mart builds a companywide computer network and deploys a system for ordering merchandise from suppliers.

1979

Wal-Mart sales top $1.2 billion, making it the first company to reach more than $1 billion in sales in a mere 17 years. The company builds a computer center and installs the first terminal in a store: an IBM 3774.

1983

The company begins to use bar codes for scanning POS data.

1984

Store associates start using Texlon handheld terminals when reordering merchandise. Upon scanning a shelf label, the unit provides a description of the merchandise, information on prior quantities ordered and other data.

Bob Martin is named CIO.

1985

Wal-Mart has 882 stores and sales of $8.4 billion.

1987

Wal-Mart completes what is at the time the largest private satellite communication system in the United States. It links all operating units of company and headquarters with two-way voice, data and one-way video communication.

A check-in system designed to take full advantage of container bar-code labeling is in the back room of every Wal-Mart store.

1990

A data warehouse prototype is created to store historical sales data.

1992

Wal-Mart deploys the Retail Link system to strengthen supplier partnerships. The system provides vendors information on sale trends and inventory levels.

1993

Randy Mott becomes CIO.

1995

Wal-Mart has stores in 50 states, for a total of 1,995 Wal-Mart stores, 239 Supercenters, 433 Sam's Clubs and 276 international stores. Sales top $93.6 billion.

1996

Wal-Mart makes Retail Link and EDI available via the Internet and begins using the Internet as an application platform.

Wal-Mart and Sam's Club launch online stores.

2000

Kevin Turner becomes CIO.

2002

Wal-Mart chooses the Internet for data exchange with thousands of its global suppliers.

Linda Dillman becomes CIO.

Wal-Mart has its biggest single-day sales in history: $1.43 billion on the day after Thanksgiving.

2004

Wal-Mart announces it will deploy radio frequency identification (RFID) technology on Jan. 1, 2005.

2006

Rollin Ford is named CIO.

Wal-Mart redesigns Walmart.com, starts experimenting with Web 2.0 and social networking tools, and contracts with Oracle and Hewlett-Packard to use their price-optimization and BI retail applications.

The company ends the year with $349 billion in sales, nearly 2 million employees and 6,775 stores worldwide.

2007

Wal-Mart launches Site to Store service, enabling online customers to pick up merchandise in stores.

SOURCES: Academy of Information & Management Sciences Journal, 2006; CIO reporting; Walmart.com

You are here: Technology Topics » Feature

Most Recent Technology Topics Stories

White Papers »

Has Your Server Infrastructure Kept Pace with End User Demands?

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Business Centric DLP

This report, by Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the need for a new business-centric approach to DLP in order to align business and security requirements.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter