The OCP organization (Open Compute Project) recently added a brand new member on its team, Google. The Silicon Valley giant joined the project that Facebook started back in 2011, to “drive standards in IT infrastructure”.
An announcement published on Google’s cloud platform reads: “Google will contribute a new rack specification that includes 48V power distribution and a new form factor to allow OCP racks to fit into our data centers.”
“Our 48V architecture has since evolved and includes servers with 48V to point-of-load designs, and rack-level 48V Li-Ion UPS systems. Google has been designing and using 48V infrastructure at scale for several years, and we feel comfortable with the robustness of the design and its reliability.”
John Zipfel, Google’s Technical Program Manager and the person who wrote the announcement, suggested that there is a chance that Google could collaborate with the OCP organization in other areas as well.
“We’ve recently begun engaging the industry to identify better disk solutions for cloud based applications. And we think that we can work with OCP to go even further, looking up the software stack to standardize server and networking management systems. We look forward to new and exciting advancements to come with the OCP community”, he said.
Google hasn’t submitted a proposed specification to the OCP yet, but the company is working with Facebook to get that done.
What remains to be clarified, is whether Google’s contribution will go on paper under Google’s name or as the new parent company, Alphabet. While it may not strike as a significant factor at first glance, do not be fooled. This seemingly negligible details could prove to be a contributory factor to Alphabet’s market shares in the long run.
But, to stay on topic, this new collaboration is expected to bring a number of new resources to the organization, which by the way happened to have its OCP Storage Monthly Call earlier today.
If you wish to contribute to the organization, there are more than a few ways to do so. You can either read the current projects and provide feedback or comment. In addition, one can also become a corporate member of the Open Compute Project Foundation and participate in the projects, by completing the OCP Membership Agreement.