Cloud Data Centers: Rackspace Preps Open Compute Summit 2012

Rackspace is gearing up to host an Open Compute Summit conference at its San Antonio, Texas, headquarters (May 2-3). The summit, held twice annually, will focus on energy efficient IT infrastructure — servers, storage and data center infrastructure — and working sessions for engineers to collectively shape and define the Open Compute Project (OCP) community.

Dropping a few big names, the Rackspace blog post states that the summit “brings representatives of the OCP board including Facebook, Goldman-Sachs, Intel and Arista Networks together for brainstorming sessions, panel discussions, and a keynote address on the latest OCP projects.”

As a founding board member of the OCP Rackspace also participated in last October’s summit in New York City, which was hosted by Facebook.

In April 2011, Facebook released the specifications of its first-ever dedicated data center when it announced the Open Compute Project. Located in Pineville, Oregon, the social media powerhouse touted a 38% increase in energy efficiency and 24% for the data center. Team partners on the Pineville effort included Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, HP, and Dell.

The Open Compute Project’s mission statement reads:

Channel partners interested in attending can register on the Open Compute website starting March 15, 2012.