Telecom Industry Begins to Adopt the OCP Initiative

Founded in 2011 by Facebook, the Open Compute Project (OCP) is an initiative aimed at openly sharing data center designs and best practices in order to make data centers more economical and efficient.  Rather than using proprietary hardware, the OCP is creating commodity hardware that can be leveraged across several industries resulting in data centers that are more scalable and affordable. Historically, data centers house large numbers of servers to handle the incredible demands being placed on the computing infrastructure.  These servers typically only run at a fraction of their capacity, take up a lot space, and require a lot of heating and cooling to keep them functioning. Additionally, the servers are dedicated to only a single application. Five years later, the OCP boasts other power players who have bought into the initiative including Intel, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and Rackspace. The OCP goals have gained a lot of momentum in the IT industry. Currently, the networking world and data centers have bought in fully on the concept, but telecommunications is only finally starting to come around and weigh the advantages. Jason Taylor, VP of Infrastructure at Facebook, and Chairman and President of the Open Compute Project Foundation referenced the telecommunications industry recently when he stated “These are the companies that need to invest in infrastructure in order to just exist, be efficient, in order to just do their business.” He further added “This is another industry where infrastructure is core to the business. Hopefully we’ll end up with a far more efficient infrastructure.” Started in January 2016 by the OCP, the Telco Project includes six new power players: AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, EE, SK Telecom, Verizon, and Equinix. These companies will lead the industry in communicating telco technical requirements, implementing OCP innovations for cost-savings and flexibility, and assisting the OCP in required operational needs. Essentially the telecommunications industry is another piece of the OCP puzzle and a big one at that. The need for bandwidth is only going to increase in the future.  To learn more about how our optical transceivers can help you, please contact us.