Open Compute Project and the Changing Data Center

We’ve all seen the impact that open source has had on innovation in software; open sharing and collaboration have been at the root of some of our greatest achievements as an industry. Similarly, the Open Compute Project, a prominent industry initiative focused on driving greater openness and collaboration in infrastructure technology, has cultivated a community working together establishing common standards for scalable and highly efficient technologies that everyone can adopt and build upon, from the bottom of the hardware stack to the top. Facebook’s Ken Patchett will provide a brief history of the project and an overview of current technologies, and discuss how open compute platforms are shaping the future of computing. He will share learnings from his work as Facebook’s director of data center operations in the Western region and highlight how open source is changing the data center.

Ken is responsible for Facebook’s data center operations in the Western Region, including the company's facilities in Prineville, Oregon, and Altoona, Iowa. Altoona is Facebook’s fourth owned and operated data center and is built to specifications developed as part of the Open Compute Project (OCP). Prior to joining Facebook in 2010, Ken established data centers for Google across the United States and Asia. His career has spanned several industries, from mechanical engineering at a pulp paper manufacturer, to rising through the ranks of Compaq and Microsoft, where he initiated its network operations team, including security management, routing, switching, and content networking technologies.