2019 was a standout year for the Open Compute Project

Report says 2019 was “watershed” year for Open Compute Project 

A review of the Open Compute Project (OCP) has shown use of the foundation’s certified equipment has risen by 40 percent year-on-year.

The findings come from a report conducted by Omdia and commissioned by OCP which sought to analyse the impact of OCP-qualified gear on the technology industry.

OCP was launched by Facebook in 2011 as a collaborative effort to redesign IT technology to more efficiently support growing demand for digital infrastructure, chiefly the ever-rising number of data centres that connect the cloud. The likes of Facebook, Microsoft and Rackspace have ramped up purchases of OCP equipment in recent years.

From a series of interviews conducted with OCP-certified equipment vendors and end-users, Omdia found manufacturers of OCP-certified equipment made $3.6B selling to non-board member companies last year, an increase of over $1B compared to 2018, representing a 40 percent YoY growth rate.

Projecting ahead, the report forecasts yet further growth in 2020, estimating OCP non-board revenue to hit $5.3B in this year and $11.8B by 2023, despite concerns that the Covid-19 pandemic might impact growth in certain sections of the tech economy.

The sectors most keenly adopting OCP equipment are government, gaming, e-commerce and energy, displacing finance companies as the primary growth driver. The report said OCP equipment’s suitability to HPC workloads was also driving a lot of the growth.

Rocky Bullock, CEO at OCP, described the foundation’s 2019 performance as a watershed moment for the data centre industry.

“We are witnessing a paradigm shift in the data centre industry as adoption acceleration continues,” he said.

“Collaboration with open source software organizations and OCP solution providers is making open hardware easier to adopt and consume. The results also indicate that earlier enabling of a robust product offering and supply chain for edge products is broadening the reach of OCP products into new verticals,” he added.

The 2020 OCP Virtual Summit on May 12-15 will be used to showcase the full findings of the report. Registration here.