Why Open Compute Is a Win For Rackspace 46
1sockchuck writes "Cloud provider Rackspace is looking to the emerging open source hardware ecosystem to transform its data centers. The cloud provider spends $200 million a year on servers and storage, and sees the Open Compute Project as the key to reducing its costs on hardware design and operations. Rackspace is keen on the potential of the new Open Rack program, and its buying power is motivating HP and Dell to develop for the new standard — partly because Rackspace has also been talking with original design manufacturers like Quantra and Wistron. It's an early look at how open source hardware could have a virtuous impact on the server economy. 'I think the OEMs were not very interested (in Open Compute) initially,' said Rackspace COO Mark Roenigk. 'But in the last six months they have become really focused.'"
Re:Open source software makes sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source hardware totally makes sense in the hobbyist world. Its going like gangbusters at places like Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc.
Remains to be seen how well it works at the big corporate level, but I could see real benefit to putting an end to duplicative squandering of R&D resources by a hundred different companies on same, but different, designs for motherboards, power supplies, routers, etc.
I kind of doubt its going to help Cisco, HP or Dell though. Its just going to further commoditize hardware and cut profit margins. Once you have solid designs big data centers like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Rackspace will, if they haven't already, farm out the manufacturing to lowest bidder in China and cut out the middlemen which would be HP and Dell.
I really don't see what value HP and Dell add to anything at this point and their stock prices seem to concur. Microsoft and Linux own the software, and hardware just isn't a place to differentiate much any more except on the very high end. Apple was smart enough to hold on to the software, hardware and ecosystem and they are reaping huge profits as a result.
HP is especially sad. Apotheker knew their hardware business was going no where but down, his board apparently completely supported him in spinning it off, if it wasn't the boards idea in the first place. Leo announced it, stock tanked, media and social networks skewered them, and the board scapegoated Leo and claimed it was all his fault. Sad.
Another plus with open hardware, coupled with open software, is it might slow down the NSA, FBI and/or Huawei from backdooring all our computing and network infrastructure.
Buzz word filled press release (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Open source software makes sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually they totally are boxes in a rack when you are talking purely about the hardware. Its reaching the point it is easier to swap it out than fix it unless its something easy to fix like a power supply, RAM or a disk. The companies with big data centers can field their own hardware and software people and probably get better service than A) paying Dell or HP and arm and a leg for support B) waiting for Dell or HP to send someone or or ship boxes back and forth.
I think one of the points of open computing is all the big centers are using the same hardware and the same drivers so they are sharing the burden of debugging the hardware and getting working drivers which are probably the biggest support burdens. Its almost got to be better to get rid of all the fragmentation in hardware designs and drivers and have everyone focus on a few of each and make them work really well. Hopefully open computing wont fragment as badly as Linux distributions and desktops have.
If it fragments then, no I dont really see the point to it.
Re:Open source software makes sense. (Score:3, Insightful)
And for the record, my opinion is that open source hardware is just as valid as open source software, however the entrenched interests lined up against it are powerful and determined to undermine it.
"Open source hardware" seems to mean "hardware standard not generated by a recognized professional organization." That is, the "closed source" hardware rack is an EIA standard from the 50s, not the kind of detailed drawing you could take to a local machine shop and say "give me 2 of these." Those industry groups have built-in bureaucracy and provide confidence that the next standard revision will be a small revision and completely compatible with all the preceding generations. I can buy rack mountable hardware today, and be extremely confident that it will plug into the rack I got in 1970. Standards produced by professional organizations like EIA, IEEE, and NEMA also have built-in credibility and implicit support of multiple industrial concerns. Of course, the bureaucracy and review means that they can be somewhat slow to accommodate changing demands, but that's kind of the point. "Open source" standards may be developed by professionals with support from multiple industry groups, too, but they may also be a bunch of high school kids in their parents' garage, and therefore require more review by whomever is going to use them. Especially if that user is considering building out a $100,000,000 production line. In either case, you still have your own manufacturing design work to do: the "open source" guidelines don't add any value.
Open source software, on the other hand, is a thing you can use directly, and (to the extent that it works) saves development time. For any sizeable project, it's easier to fix problems than to generate from scratch (unless its really bad), so open source software brings value
That said, a lot of professional organizations seem to use their standards as money-makers. The NEMA standard for welding electrode holders is $50. The ANSI standard for electrical meters is $150. The standards are developed at the cost of the member organizations, and I don't think royalties are paid to those organizations (who are generally the people paying the fees, anyway). It would be nice to see those organizations move toward zero cost electronic distribution of their standards, at least for individual use. One imagines that, as "O/S" hardware designs prove themselves, that they will get industry buy-in, and will get incorporated into formally blessed standards.