Dive Brief:
- Walmart said it will open-source the cloud technology it built following its acquisition of startup OneOps, making it freely available to anyone, CIO reported.
- Walmart said open sourcing the technology will help other companies avoid “vendor lock-in.”
- The @WalmartLabs division will upload the technology's source code to GitHub by the end of the year, company officials said.
Dive Insight:
Because OneOps is designed to help users manage critical application workloads on any cloud-based infrastructure, they will have the ability to “move applications, databases or entire cloud environments from one cloud provider to another so as to take advantage of better offers.”
"Developers and cloud users know the upside of operating in the cloud – flexibility, scalability, speed, etc.," said Jeremy King, CTO of Walmart global e-commerce and head of @WalmartLabs, and Tim Kimmet, vice president of platform and systems for @WalmartLabs. "Unfortunately, too many have discovered the biggest downside…being locked in to the cloud provider you start with."
Making the tech open source is good news for companies that want to change cloud providers but have previously been locked in to their provider’s proprietary systems.
"I think this is a great move by Walmart," said Al Hilwa, a program director with IDC. "These technologies that provide de-coupling from specific clouds can themselves generate lock-in, and it is strategically preferable to have them in open source."
