Ahold Delhaize USA modernizes for faster, reliable grocery e-commerce on Azure

Modernizing e-commerce for scale and resilience 

In United States grocery retail, success is measured in seconds and margins. Online shoppers expect the same speed and personalization they find everywhere else. Every order, cart, and click must work flawlessly.  

For Ahold Delhaize USA, one of the largest grocery groups in the United States, meeting rising customer expectations meant strengthening the foundation of its e-commerce business. Its five US brands relied on stable but aging systems that limited innovation and scalability. On-premises infrastructure and disconnected data made it difficult to deliver consistent, real-time digital experiences. 

“Our goal was to modernize our omnichannel platform so we could innovate faster, stay resilient, and be ready for what comes next,” says Amit Shah, Senior Vice President of Digital Technology at Ahold Delhaize USA. 

That decision sparked one of the largest e-commerce modernization initiatives in the US grocery industry. It redefined how a retailer with decades of deep customer connections engages digital customers and maximizes efficiencies at scale. 

Solidifying the foundation for modern retail

Modernization at this scale was more than a technical project. It was a rethinking of how the digital business operates. Ahold Delhaize USA began by aligning its technology priorities to the attributes that matter most to customers: speed, reliability, and consistency across every digital touchpoint. The goal was not just to move faster, but to make every online interaction feel seamless and dependable.

Three years ago, the company launched a transformation initiative that redefined scale in grocery e-commerce. Working with Microsoft and technology partners, Ahold Delhaize USA migrated more than 3,000 virtual machines and modernized nearly 300 PostgreSQL workloads, using Microsoft Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server. The company moved from on-premises systems to a flexible, cloud-based environment built on Azure. 

With Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), the Ahold Delhaize USA teams use fully managed, cloud-native container orchestration to deploy efficiently and scale automatically based on demand. AKS delivers multizone high availability and built-in self-healing to maintain service continuity, even under peak traffic loads. With containerized applications, updates can now be deployed in hours instead of weeks, giving Ahold Delhaize USA the agility to deliver new features at the pace of customer demand.

Oleg Shokodko, Platform Engineering Director at Ahold Delhaize USA, explains, “AKS has been essential for our platform’s resiliency and scalability. Its managed orchestration empowers us to deploy quickly and scale automatically, helping ensure reliable performance even during traffic spikes.”

Ahold Delhaize USA optimized its database architecture for greater resiliency, performance, and cost efficiency—enabling faster deployments, simplified scaling, and consistent performance across brands. The company achieved this transformation by transitioning to Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server, a managed service designed to enhance reliability with built-in high availability, automated maintenance, and flexible compute options. 

Shah explains, “By transitioning to Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server, we’ve optimized our database architecture to enhance resiliency and performance. These solutions are already driving efficiencies and will continue to generate cost savings that can be reinvested into future growth across the business.”

Ahold Delhaize USA’s phased “Maintain, Sustain, Attain” approach balanced steady progress with business continuity. This is a critical lesson for any enterprise undertaking large-scale modernization. For the teams driving the change, success was measured not only in speed or uptime, but in confidence. Every deployment that worked, and every improvement that reached customers faster, built trust in what modernization could mean for the company’s thriving brands. 

Data modernization was essential. Ahold Delhaize USA made foundational technical choices to build a future-proof, resilient, and scalable solution. A core principle was maximizing Azure platform as a service (PaaS) offerings to boost operational efficiency and support innovation. The company selected Azure Cache for Redis for high-performance, in-memory caching, improving application responsiveness and reducing latency.  

“By using Azure Cache for Redis, we uphold rapid data retrieval and reduce load on primary databases, enhancing scalability and user experience,” Shah explains.  

After reengineering its data architecture, Ahold Delhaize USA chose Azure Cosmos DB for nonrelational data. The company analyzed datasets to decide which to keep in relational databases and which to migrate. Azure Cosmos DB now provides a fast, resilient data layer that keeps inventory, pricing, and personalization accurate in real time. The result is a faster, more reliable checkout experience and fewer “out-of-stock” surprises for customers. 

Engineering empowerment and enterprise reliability 

Ahold Delhaize USA modernized both its infrastructure and engineering practices. With the adoption of GitHub Enterprise, more than 800 repositories across brands were unified, enabling developers to build once and deploy everywhere. Using GitHub Copilot, teams now code, test, and release faster, improving velocity and freeing time for innovation.

Shah emphasizes, “Our modernization was not only about infrastructure. It was about empowering our engineering talent to use the latest tools and create better customer experiences.”

Security and governance advanced in parallel. Automated monitoring and code-scanning tools provide continuous risk prevention across environments. These tools help engineers identify and resolve vulnerabilities earlier in development.  

Nathan Nellans, Senior Principal Solution Engineer at Ahold Delhaize USA, adds, “With Azure AI and GitHub Copilot, developers no longer manage infrastructure. They focus on solving business challenges and delivering value. Automation now runs end-to-end from merge to deployment, fundamentally changing how fast we can innovate.”

The shift positioned Ahold Delhaize USA as a destination for engineering talent—a place where grocery meets modern software culture. Empowering developers early proved crucial: governance automation improved accuracy and cross-brand alignment before migration prevented rework. These outcomes prove that modernization is as much about people and process as it is about technology. 

From cloud native to AI native

Today, Ahold Delhaize USA’s unified e-commerce platform supports more than 1 billion customer interactions annually without a single missed transaction during migration. For the company, modernization was not the finish line. It was the foundation for continuous improvement.

With its systems now cloud native, Ahold Delhaize USA’s engineering teams are focused on speed, quality, and scale. Using GitHub Copilot and Azure AI services, developers have automated testing, accelerated delivery, and improved code quality across the organization. Early results show up to a 40% improvement in delivery speed, helping teams focus on building faster customer-facing innovations.

“Our engineers now use AI tools to analyze and improve code across 800 repositories. It has created a new rhythm of collaboration. AI helps us move faster without compromising quality,” Shokodko adds. 

Behind the scenes, a modern data estate keeps information flowing seamlessly across systems—from supply chain to fulfillment—enabling smarter, faster decisions and new opportunities for AI-driven optimization.

Shah notes, “Becoming cloud-native was essential to becoming AI-native. By modernizing the core of our omnichannel platform, we have set the stage to further apply the benefits of AI across engineering and operations.”

A new model for the modern retailer

In a market where expectations shift by the minute, Ahold Delhaize USA has shown that modernization at scale is possible—and sustainable. Its new digital foundation facilitates continuous improvement, unified brand operations, and the agility to respond to customers in real time.

With this foundation in place, Ahold Delhaize USA continues to evolve how technology supports the business. From more efficient fulfillment to data-driven decision making, the same platform that powers e-commerce today gives teams a launchpad for future capabilities. The company’s experience proves that lasting modernization depends on the connection between technology, talent, and trust.

Ahold Delhaize USA’s journey shows what modern retail looks like when business and technology evolve together—connected, resilient, and continually improving.

Discover more about Ahold Delhaize USA on LinkedIn and Instagram.