Another way to Look at Open Compute Project, a Massive Open Online Course

Economist has a post on Higher Education being disrupted by Massive Open Online Courses.  There are only a few of us in the data center industry who think about this if they are facing their kids path in higher education.  What is closer to what we encounter is why go to a data center conference?  The more experienced find there is little to learn at a conference and it is not worth thousands of registration fee and T&E to go to a conference.

Massive open online forces

The rise of online instruction will upend the economics of higher education

Feb 8th 2014 | From the print edition

UNIVERSITIES have not changed much since students first gathered in Oxford and Bologna in the 11th century. Teaching has been constrained by technology. Until recently a student needed to be in a lecture hall to hear the professor or around a table to debate with fellow students. Innovation is eliminating those constraints, however, and bringing sweeping change to higher education.

 

A senior analyst for one of the highly respected IT advisory companies once went to Open Compute Summit and late at night after a few drinks he was talking to Frank Frankovsky and told Frank he should charge to attend the OCP Summits.  He said that his company charges thousands to attend yet there is more useful content from OCP than his company’s events.  I’ve been to both and I would agree I would pay for OCP before his company’s events.

OCP has taken a leadership position to be free to attend and content is free to use.  What other data center event can you go to that has free attendance and free to get to the content, including no registration.This is drawing in users and knowledge from the people who have good things to say yet don’t have the marketing budget to sponsor events or the experience to get their talk in as a presentation.

Any one can find flaws in OCP, and those flaws are exposed to all to see and make comments.  That’s part of being Open.  What data center conference do you attend where you feel like you can freely express your opinion?

OCP’s success is coming at the expense of other data center events that can’t compete against free and open.  With 3,500 registered attendees, 2,400 or more who showed up, and thousands watching the live stream it is a force of change.  Companies who want to reach the OCP audience of scale-out data center infrastructure, hardware, and software continue to support the event.

Media coverage of OCP beats most data center events.  I honestly can’t say what data center event consistently has media coverage better than OCP.

One Simple Reason why Open Compute Project works, An Executive Visionary - Frank Frankovsky

When you think of the technical companies in our industry you can’t help, but think of the founders - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Larry and Sergey, Zuckerberg, etc.

Organizations that are trying to drive change in the industry that host conferences can be viewed in the same way.  The successful ones have founders as key figures.  Seybold Conferences worked because of Jonathan Seybold.  GigaOm works because of Om Malik.  Tim O’Reilly.

And, Open Compute Project works because of Frank Frankovsky.

Where would Open Compute be without Frank?  Probably just an idea of what could be done.

Here is Frank’s opening keynote at OCP V.

What is Open Compute Summit? A gathering of the leaders in scale-out data center industry

I’ve gone to all the Open Compute Summits (five in all) and I know many of the people in the organization.  It can be hard to describe what the open compute summit is given I have seen it grow. 

Here is a Forbes article on the Open Compute Summit and Intel’s Software defined infrastructure.  The part that jumped out was the description of the event.

I attended the Open Compute Summit last week in San Jose, where industry leaders in the scale-out datacenter industry gathered to discuss and attempt to get some kind of alignment on future architectures and building blocks. By architecture, I mean the building blocks, the interconnects and the rules by which future football field size datacenters will be designed and operate.

The Open Compute Summit continues to grow in attendance.  Last one had 1,500, this one had 2,400.  It is free to attendees and the presentations are much better than many other data center events.

The Open Compute Summit is not about the low level infrastructure of power and cooling.  The event is more about the stuff you put in a data center for scale-out infrastructure. 

We’ll see if the next event hits 3,000, but even if they hit only 2,500 again, the event will be significant.

Facebook is saving Billions being efficient

I am getting busier and I am finding others who are covering the green data center topic well.  GigaOm’s Derrick Harris was at OCP.  I know I saw him there and he writes on Facebook’s efficiency effort saving billions.

With Open Compute, Facebook is saving billions and moving markets

by Derrick Harris

16 MINS AGO

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SUMMARY:

Facebook might have launched the Open Compute Project to force server vendors to build higher-effiency gear, but it’s having a much greater impact than even Facebook anticipated.

Mark Zuckerberg and Jay Parikh mentioned the savings.

During on-stage appearances at this year’s Open Compute Summit, which took place earlier this week in San Jose, both Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and VP of Engineering Jay Parikh highlighted the cost savings: Development of energy-efficient technologies has saved Facebook $1.2 billion over the past three years.

Zuckerberg (hoodie) on stage with Tim O’Reilly.

The ARM Server momentum continues

Calxeda’s end is not the end of the ARM Server.  Yesterday at OCP there was a bunch of ARM news and ZDNet’s Larry Dignan posts.

ARM server army revs up at Open Compute Project powwow

Summary: ARM-based servers haven't taken over the data center yet, but the runway is getting crowded. Can ARM-based servers really get 25 percent of the data center market by 2019 as AMD hopes?

AMD announced their ARM processor.