OREANDA-NEWS. January 29, 2016.  Equinix has been committed since our founding to innovation, interconnection and collaboration. That’s why it’s fitting that we’re joining the Open Compute Project and its newly established OCP Telco Project as it expands to focus on data center and interconnection technologies for telecommunications companies.

OCP offers a proven model for innovation. Its goals mesh with our DNA, its objectives are suited for the network- and cloud-rich environments we’ve spent 17 years building, and we’re excited to be part of it.

Being a member of the OCP community aligns Equinix with some of our leading customers as they push boundaries and develop next-generation interconnection solutions. It also enables us to tap into the industry’s formidable resources and brain power, and share our own data center and interconnection expertise, as we commit to a future where constant innovation is both possible and necessary, and where we can continue to bring people together to find new ways to connect and grow.

Jason Taylor, President and Chairman of the OCP board and VP of infrastructure at Facebook, told us he was pleased to have our cooperation and support during what he called “this important growth period for the Open Compute Project.”

“With the increasing pace of innovation and the corresponding infrastructure demands for sustaining that technology, customers will look for support from leaders like Equinix to provide the flexibility and performance they need,” Taylor said.

The OCP Foundation was established in 2011 by Facebook, Intel, Rackspace, Goldman Sachs and Andy Bechtolsheim. They began the work of scaling computing infrastructure as efficiently and economically as possible by starting with a blank slate and keeping the technology open.

The successes seen throughout the OCP projects over the past five years motivated the OCP Board of directors to facilitate the creation of the OCP Telco Project and recruit industry leaders to help drive it. From the telecommunications industry, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, EE, SK Telecom, and Verizon are now involved, in addition to Nexius and Nokia.

Below are the objectives for the OCP Telco Project:

  • Communicate telco technical requirements effectively to the OCP community
  • Strengthen the OCP ecosystem to address the deployment and operational needs of telcos
  • Bring OCP innovations to telco data center infrastructure for increased cost-savings and agility

As the world’s leading interconnection company, Equinix has much to contribute to an initiative that seeks participation from all corners of an industry.

Equinix is home to more than 1,100 network providers, as well as 500-plus cloud services providers, which gives our customers a broad choice of providers in any of our 40 global markets. In total, Platform Equinix hosts more than 7,500 customers, each of them potential customers or partners in developing new solutions or new routes into untapped markets.

We also have extensive experience in building ecosystems that help bring these partners together – our financial services and electronic payments ecosystems are well-known examples. But these digital communities are more than marketplaces. They are also “ecosystems of innovation,” where ideas are exchanged, products and services are developed, and new revenue streams are discovered. Their structure aligns well with OCP’s open technology ethos.

In addition, Equinix is known for our carrier- and service provider-neutrality. Our customers, including OCP members, can utilize any technology they choose to build their own ecosystems and search for ways to advance the project’s aims and their business goals.

We’re thrilled to be part of the OCP community, and the OCP Telco Project has the potential to move an entire industry toward the next wave of software and hardware capabilities and advances. It’s a privilege to be able to support and enable the interconnection that will help drive innovation, shape the future, and meet OCP’s objectives in the telco ecosystem and beyond.