Open Compute: Momentum Builds For Open Hardware

Perhaps the best sign of the progress made by the Open Compute Project is that companies as diverse as Rackspace Hosting, Fidelity Investments and Goldman Sachs are all running servers based on these “open hardware” designs in their data centers.

In less than two years, the Open Compute Project (OCP) has grown far beyond its origins as a showcase for Facebook’s design innovations, evolving into an active community building cutting-edge hardware, disrupting the traditional IT supply chain, and laying the groundwork for future innovation.

More than 1,900 technologists gathered today for the Open Compute Summit at the Santa Clara Convention. That’s three times the size of the last summit in May 2012. They packed an expo floor filled with hardware – real, working hardware based on open designs. Meanwhile, the industry’s thought leaders took the stage to outline new designs that could accelerate the pace of change in the world’s largest data centers...