Walmart is becoming the first retail member of LF Networking, a collaborative ecosystem for Open Source Networking projects.
The Bentonville company will be a Platinum member of the organization, joining 21 other companies at this level. There is a maximum of 28 Platinum members permitted on the organization’s governing board, in addition to Gold, Silver and Associate members.
According to LF Networking’s charter, the organization aims to raise funds and coordinate support for open source projects involving the movement and communication of data.
Walmart Global Tech executive vice president Koby Avital will be joining the LF Networking Governing Board on behalf of Walmart. This board oversees LF Networking’s Directed Fund, which determines what projects fall within the organization’s purview, establishes guidelines for budgets, sets annual budget priorities and approves budget and staffing plans, elects Directed Fund officers, and oversees all Directed Fund business.
In his role at Walmart, Avital heads up the company’s enterprise technology platform strategy and oversees Walmart’s global data infrastructure. He also is the lead on Walmart’s multi-cloud technology, ensure workload automation, reliability of customer and company operations, and overall performance standards.
He previously served in roles a eBay and PayPal, and was the chief technology officer for Priceline.com.
“I’m excited to join the Linux Foundation Governing Board on behalf of Walmart,” Avital said in a statement. “By joining LFN, Walmart has the opportunity to contribute, influence the cloud growth and better support the enterprise and service provider communities by open-sourcing innovative technologies across its retail infrastructure.”
LF Networking is a part of the Linux Foundation, which focuses on open source projects, working to accelerate technology development and industry adoption.
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