Have You Heard About the Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP)?
Munich, Germany – September 29, 2020 – The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), is a collaborative community focused on redesigning soft- and hardware technology to efficiently support the growing demands on compute infrastructure. OCP strongly believes that openly sharing ideas, specifications, and other intellectual property is the key to maximizing innovation and reducing complexity in tech components. Therefore, the Open Compute Project Foundation provides a structure in which individuals and organizations can share their intellectual property with others and encourage the IT industry to evolve.
How everything started back in 2009
In 2009, Facebook was growing exponentially, offering new services and giving millions of people a platform to share photos and videos. Looking ahead, the company realized that it had to rethink its infrastructure to accommodate the huge influx of new people and data, and also control costs and energy consumption.
That’s when Facebook started a project to design the world’s most energy efficient data center, one that could handle unprecedented scale at the lowest possible cost. A small team of engineers spent the next two years designing and building one from the ground up: software, servers, racks, power supplies, and cooling. The result now stands in Prineville, Oregon.
It was 38% more energy efficient to build and 24% less expensive to run than the company’s previous facilities—and has led to even greater innovation.
In 2011, Facebook shared its designs with the public and—along with Intel and Rackspace, Goldman Sachs and Andy Bechtolsheim—launched the Open Compute Project and incorporated the Open Compute Project Foundation. The five members hoped to create a movement in the hardware space that would bring about the same kind of creativity and collaboration we see in open source software. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Moving forward…
Due to designing commodity hardware that is more efficient, flexible, and scalable, OCP is redefining tech infrastructure. Together, the OCP Community is throwing off the shackles of proprietary, one-size-fits-all gear.
“In Europe OCP gear for data centers is also becoming more and more accepted. One milestone for example is the European Open Compute Project Experience Center which has been established at the maincubes AMS01 data center facility, in July 2019, in Amsterdam, Schiphol,” says Stefan Frenzel, Director DACH-region for the Open Compute Project Foundation. “After the triumphant success at hyperscale data centers, data centers of the telecommunications industry, OCP IT infrastructure equipment is now strongly entering data centers on an enterprise level, also within the DACH-region.”
However, technologists across industries participate in the OCP Community, creating and refining more designs, making it possible for more companies to transition from their old, proprietary solutions to OCP gear. In response, hardware manufacturers are changing their offerings to keep up with our innovations and meet the market’s changing needs and expectations.
Furthermore, as more services are moving to the cloud, handle more data, and bring connectivity to the world, it needs to be done in the most efficient, economical, and sustainable way. Hardware has to become a commoditized and evolving set of products optimized for these challenges. That is why OCP is convinced that open collaboration is the best way to get there.
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About Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP)
The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) was initiated in 2011 with a mission to apply the benefits of open source and open collaboration to hardware and rapidly increase the pace of innovation in, near and around the data center’s networking equipment, general purpose and GPU servers, storage devices and appliances, and scalable rack designs. OCP’s collaboration model is being applied beyond the data center, helping to advance the telecom industry & EDGE infrastructure. www.opencompute.org