SAN FRANCISCO – The Open Data Center Alliance, an independent consortium of global IT leaders this week announced its formation and previewed the Alliance’s 0.5 vendor-agnostic Usage Model Roadmap.
The roadmap comprises 19 prioritized usage models that address emerging technical requirements for data center and cloud infrastructure and is based on open, interoperable solutions that can be sourced from multiple vendors and interoperate across data centers.
Members of the Open Data Center Alliance – with over $50 billion in collective IT spending – are committed to the roadmap to guide their data center and cloud purchasing decisions today and for planning their data center deployments of the future. Both RENCI and UNC Chapel Hill’s Research Computing are members of the Alliance.
The Alliance is led by a Steering Committee comprised of global IT leaders -including BMW; China Life; Deutsche Bank; JPMorgan Chase; Lockheed Martin; Marriott International, Inc.; National Australia Bank; Shell; Terremark; and UBS – who are joined by more than 70 members representing a broad array of industries and the research sector. The Open Data Center Alliance Steering Committee has selected Intel Corporation to serve as the technical advisor for the organization due to Intel’s unique role in the industry and deep experience working within industry consortiums.
“This new end user Alliance puts the power of designing the data center into the hands of IT managers,” said Matthew Eastwood, group vice president, Enterprise Platform Research at IDC. “The Open Data Center Alliance represents the first time such a significant number of end users are committing to an industry organization with the specific goal of defining data center and cloud usage models in an open, industry-standard and multi-vendor fashion.”
The Open Data Center Alliance has three levels of membership: steering committee, contributor and adopter. Adopter-level membership in is available to anyone who is building cloud or data center infrastructure and is unencumbered by vendor interests. Alliance members have the opportunity to review and comment on the Usage Model Roadmap prior to public distribution, and have access to members-only events and Alliance membership networking opportunities. The Alliance also plans to drive extensive vendor engagement to ensure that Alliance Roadmap and usage model requirements reflect the full scope of industry capability.
“With over 70 total members – and that number is expected to grow every day- we believe the Open Data Center Alliance will quickly become a leading voice of the IT community,” said Marvin Wheeler, chief strategy officer, Terremark, and Open Data Center Alliance chairman and secretary. “As a member of this Alliance, Terremark is helping to set the direction for how emerging technologies are developed and implemented in the future.”
In support of its mission, the Alliance has established five technical work groups focused on infrastructure, management, security, services, and government and ecosystem. Each work group will fully define the requirements of each prioritized usage model toward the future delivery of a detailed technical documentation suite to be used by vendors and members as guidance for deployments. In addition, the working groups are chartered to finalize the current 0.5 roadmap with a public delivery of the roadmap and initial usage models in early 2011.
To facilitate member discussion on roadmap development, the Alliance Technical Work groups are hosting a webcast series based on the five usage model categories. The first webcast, scheduled for November 17, will be publicly available and will cover the Usage Model Roadmap development process and progress. Subsequent webcasts covering each usage model category will be available only to Alliance members. To sign up for a webcast or to join the Alliance, visit www.opendatacenteralliance.org.
