Walmart open-sources OneOps to free you from cloud lock-in

OneOps is now available on GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license, offering continuous app-lifecycle management to any company, free of charge.

OneOps enables developers to code their products in a hybrid, multi-cloud environment, without committing to any one cloud vendor. What that means is that they can test and switch among different cloud providers to take advantage of better pricing, technology or scalability without being locked into any one of them.

OneOps supports both Node.js and Elasticsearch. Users can deploy apps on Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, CenturyLink Cloud and any cloud with an OpenStack endpoint. Couchbase has also integrated its NoSQL technology into the OneOps platform.

Benefits include continuous lifecycle management, cloud portability, rapid innovation and greater control of the cloud environment, Walmart says.

This isn't Walmart's first foray into the open-source world. It's already helped to release technologies such as Mupd8 and hapi to the community, for example.

"Walmart is a cloud user, not a cloud provider," explained Jeremy King, CTO of Walmart Global eCommerce and head of @WalmartLabs, and Tim Kimmet, vice president of platform and systems for @WalmartLabs, in a Tuesday blog post.

The retail giant has relied on the technology during its own digital transformation, and it aims to let other companies do the same.

"It makes sense for Walmart to release OneOps as an open-source project," King and Kimmet wrote, "so that the community can improve or build ways for it to adapt to existing technology."