Facebook Shows Green Data Center Secrets

Social Media giant Facebook has recently launched a major new initiative designed to share its server and data center designs with rivals. The company claims that its data center innovations could save enough energy to power more than 100,000 homes. The Open Compute Project (OCP) will allow the IT industry and cloud computing industry to access the design secrets behind the social network's new data center in Prineville, Oregon. This facility says uses 38% less power and costs 24% less to run than existing server farms. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said of the project “We want to share that knowledge with the industry and make server and data center design open. We're trying to foster ecosystems for the development of business startups. It's really cool. We're not the only ones who need this hardware and by sharing there will be more demand for the stuff we need, which makes it cost effective.” If other data center owners follow in Facebook's steps it could mean big business for those companies who collaborated on the project. Rackspace Hosting (NYSE: RAX), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), Power-One (NASDAQ: PWER) and Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) all contributed to the venture.