What we are finding out today is that companies are learning that the value of their in-house expertise presents a monetization opportunity beyond their core business. GE has done it with its Predix (PaaS) Cloud Platform. The LinkedIn engineering team has open sourced more than 75 projects spanning many categories, including data, frameworks, system operations, testing and mobile.
Now Walmart, through its Walmart Labs division, has launched OneOps, a cloud management and application lifecycle management platform that developers can use to develop and launch new applications in a hybrid, multi-cloud environment. Walmart is promoting the ability of the platform to allow developers to switch between different cloud providers to take advantage of better pricing, technology and scalability.
OneOps was acquired by WalmartLabs in 2013 to accelerate the adoption of cloud technologies for its Pangaea initiative, which unified all of Walmart’s global digital eCommerce activity into one in-house platform. OneOps manages several eCommerce properties within the Walmart portfolio including walmart.com, and samsclub.com.
OneOps can deploy apps on Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, CenturyLink Cloud,AWS and any cloud with an OpenStack endpoint. OneOps also supports Node.js, ElasticSearch and other extensions.
The main benefits of OneOps include:
- Continuous lifecycle management: Once a developer launches an application, OneOps helps run that app on “auto-pilot.” It automatically manages the application when unforeseen changes occur in the cloud, scaling or repairing it as needed.
- Cloud portability: Enables users to move applications, databases or even entire cloud environments freely from one cloud provider to another. Developers are able to “cloud shop” and take advantage of better technology, capacity, scalability, security, customer service or lower costs.
- Rapid innovation: Offered with safe guards so software engineers can quickly spin up virtual machines in a matter of minutes and begin coding, without having to spend hours specifying the intricacies of a specific cloud environment. OneOps models all of that for them.
- Greater control of cloud environment: Instead of cloud providers dictating what proprietary tools and technologies to use, or how much bandwidth can be had, OneOps puts the control back into the hands of developers.