Vendors of OCP-certified (Open Compute Project) equipment earned revenues of $3.6B selling to non-board member companies, showing an increase of over $1B compared to 2018 for a 40% YoY growth rate, according to a study commissioned by The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) and conducted by global technology research powerhouse, Omdia.

Initiated in 2011 with a mission to apply the benefits of open source and open collaboration to hardware, the Open Compute Project (OCP) initiative originates with Facebook, while also Intel, Rackspace and Microsoft joined the OCP in an early stage. All Facebook’s data centers are now 100% OCP-ready. Also, other industry giants – including Google, Cisco, IBM, Ericsson, NetApp, AT&T, and Lenovo – have joined the Open Compute Project.

“We are witnessing a paradigm shift in the data center industry as adoption acceleration continues,” said Rocky Bullock, CEO of the Open Compute Project Foundation. “We value the insights of the study to fuel our community to innovate, collaborate and improve the global ecosystem to support future growth.”

The finance sector yields to government, gaming, ecommerce and energy as noteworthy contributors to growth in 2019 and are projected to continue to carry future growth. Adoption is moving to telco, enterprise and government as high-performance compute (HPC) was cited across several enterprise verticals as an important growth driver. Open edge via OCP-certified equipment is getting attention in new verticals such as Energy, Oil & Gas.

“These results confirm the increased emphasis on solutions that we have undertaken,” said Bill Carter, CTO of the Open Compute Project Foundation. “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.”

Omdia, 2020 OCP Virtual Summit

Bill Carter
“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,” said Bill Carter, CTO of the Open Compute Project Foundation.

Omdia was established following the merger of the research division of Informa Tech (Ovum, Heavy Reading and Tractica) and the acquired IHS Markit technology research portfolio.

At the close of 2019, Omdia interviewed OCP-certified equipment vendors and end users to supplement its ongoing discussions within the data center ecosystem, from server, power, network and rack vendors to silicon suppliers and system integrators. Data obtained from these discussions were fed into Omdia’s proprietary bottom-up models for estimating markets to determine the growth of 2019 non-board member adoption over the previous year. Participants shared how the market has changed over the last 12 months regarding technology demands, shifting compute to the edge, a circular economy, distribution models and more.

“Once again, the market has shown healthy maturation with significant revenue growth,” said Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Executive Director Research & Technology Fellow at Omdia. “We have seen the early embers of an emerging supply chain with a circular economy, innovations driven by OCP certification and hyperscale operators showing greater importance over the past year.”

On May 12-15, the Open Compute Project Foundation will hold its 2020 OCP Virtual Summit. Here, visitors can learn the complete details of the research findings, including “how the market has matured and shifted from 2018 and the projected track of dynamic growth expected through 2023.”

Dr. Cliff Grossner and Mr. Vladimir Galabov from Omdia will present the detailed research findings at 1:30 p.m. PST on Wednesday, May 13. Dr. Grossner will also present on Friday, May 15, “Delivering the Open Edge: New opportunities for Collaboration” during the OCP Future Technologies Symposium. The Summit and Symposium are free to attend.