Walmart to Release OneOps Cloud Technology as Open Source: Will It Be Enough to Save Them?

Earlier this week WalmartLabs (yes, that Walmart) announced that it will release OneOps cloud technology as an open source tool by year end. Jeremy

Earlier this week WalmartLabs (yes, that Walmart) announced that it will release OneOps cloud technology as an open source tool by year end.Jeremy King, CTO of Walmart Global eCommerce and Head of WalmartLabs and Tim Kimmet, VP of Platform and Systems at WalmartLabs explain in their October 14 announcement:

“OneOps is powerful cloud technology we built ourselves that has transformed the way our engineers develop and launch new products to our customers. They deliver this with more speed and at a lower cost because OneOps helps them (1) avoid the pitfalls of being ‘locked-in’ to a cloud provider, and (2) thrive in WalmartLabs’ ‘DevOps’ culture – whatever code developers write, they own, from its development to its launch to customers.”

“This is good news for developers who need technology that can continuously manage and monitor the applications they develop when it’s deployed in the cloud. It’s great news for companies who have considered switching cloud providers but experience the ‘Hotel California Effect,’ where they can ‘check out but never leave’ their cloud provider because they’re locked into the provider’s proprietary APIs, architecture and tools,” said King and Kimmet.

WalmartLabs says OneOps has four main benefits:

  1. Cloud portability so developers can seamlessly move applications, databases and entire cloud environments from one cloud provider to another, making it much easier to switch providers.
OneOps

  1. Continuous lifecycle management of applications so that OneOps goes on auto-pilot to scale and repair apps as needed.
  2. Faster innovation allows engineers to set up a new environment to host their apps in minutes, without having to navigate a specific cloud environment.
  3. Greater abstraction of cloud environments returns control to the developers, instead of cloud developers who typically dictate APIs, architecture, tools and technologies developers must use.

WalmartLabs purchased OneOps in 2013, according to Fast Company. By sharing the OneOps tools with other developers, WalmartLabs has essentially stripped the barriers put up by other cloud hosting providers. With OneOps, cloud providers can compete based on price, customer service and innovation.Looking at it from a different angle, Walmart is not having a great year financially. For the second quarter of fiscal year ending 2016, Walmart’s revenue is $120.2 billion, compared to $120.1 billion for the same period last year. Operating income is down 10%, dropping from $6.7 billion to $6.1 billion year over year.While net sales in the U.S. were up 4.8% at $74.0 billion, international net sales were down 9.6% at $30.6 billion. Walmart says that earnings are down due, in part, to wage increases, additional hours and training, and reduced pharmacy reimbursement rates. The company predicts that sales will be flat for the year, says TheStreet.At the end of fiscal year 2015, Walmart had revenue of $485.7 billion. It employed 2.2 million associates around the world. It had 260 million global customers and members visiting 11,532 stores in 28 countries and e-commerce websites in 11 countries.Despite these impressive numbers, on Wednesday, Walmart (NYSE: WMT) stock took a big hit, driving the price down 10% to $60.03, and costing shareholders $21 billion. Two days later the stock price continues to drop, to $58.89 as of this writing (10/16/15, 1:20 p.m. Eastern).Insider Take:Walmart needs a win, and it looks like the company is trying different strategies to hold its own while also competing with retail giants like Amazon, first with its unlimited shipping subscription service and now with cloud services. While Walmart’s announcement seems somewhat innocuous, Fast Company thinks Walmart is “taking a swipe at Amazon.”We aren’t sure if it is Walmart’s goal to compete with the Amazons and Best Buys, or if it was a matter of self-preservation to make the OneOps announcement the same day the company’s stock plummeted. Was the announcement an attempt to stabilize the stock price? If so, it doesn’t look like it worked. Walmart needs to do more than just offer open source technology and a membership program for free shipping to bounce back from a $21 billion dollar stock hit.

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