Karen Liu, Principal Analyst, Components
Open Compute Summit V, held last week, was a birthday party for open source hardware. The movement seeks to map lessons learned from open source software to the hardware world. Open Compute Project (OCP) has grown beyond serving the unique needs of its hyperscale founders and playing in the sandbox of open source architecture.
This year’s announcements got down to business, with designs adapted to fit more traditional enterprises. The goal is no longer just to demonstrate new hardware, but to offer a path to migrate from old to new data centers. Two partners, ITRI (Taiwan) and University of Texas at San Antonio, have set up compliance certification labs. OCP appears – despite its anti-standards rhetoric – to be taking the best of the standardization world as well as the open source world.