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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nTomorrow, I\u2019ll be speaking at Zettastructure: The European Digital Infrastructure Summit hosted by Datacenter Dynamics in London. In collaboration with the Open Compute Project (OCP), we are introducing Project Olympus<\/i> \u2013 our next generation hyperscale cloud hardware design and a new model for open source hardware development with the OCP community. This is a significant moment as we usher in a new era of open source hardware development at cloud speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Microsoft has been a significant and growing contributor to open source projects for the past decade, particularly with Microsoft Azure. In 2014, we began reimagining our Azure hardware through the lens of open source innovation and joined OCP. Our initial contributions were server and datacenter designs that power the Azure hyperscale cloud. We\u2019ve also contributed technologies that showcase the software-defined networking (SDN) principles of speed and scale-out that serve as Azure\u2019s backbone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve learned a tremendous amount from our deep collaboration with the OCP Foundation and the open source community over the past few years. An important realization is that open source hardware development is currently not as agile and iterative as open source software. The current process for open hardware development is to contribute designs that are production-ready. At that stage, the design is essentially finalized \u2013 almost 100% complete \u2013 and this late contribution delays the development of derivative designs, limits interactive community engagement and adoption, and slows down overall delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To address these challenges, we\u2019ve set out in collaboration with the OCP to introduce a new hardware development model for community based open collaboration. Project Olympus<\/i> applies a model of open source collaboration that has been embraced for software but has historically been at odds with the physical demands of developing hardware. We\u2019re taking a very different approach by contributing our next generation cloud hardware designs when they are approx. 50% complete \u2013 much earlier in the cycle than any previous OCP project. By sharing designs that are actively in development, Project Olympus<\/i> will allow the community to contribute to the ecosystem by downloading, modifying, and forking the hardware design just like open source software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMicrosoft is opening the door to a new era of open source hardware development. Project Olympus, the re-imagined collaboration model and the way they\u2019re bringing it to market, is unprecedented in the history of OCP and open source datacenter hardware,\u201d said Bill Carter, Chief Technology Officer, Open Compute Project Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The community can play a significant role in expanding the Project Olympus<\/i> ecosystem by taking advantage of the early access and contributing additional building blocks to enable a new common hardware design portfolio. OCP Solution Providers will benefit by being able to rapidly assemble hardware solutions specific to product offerings, and the broader community benefits from proven base hardware designs on which they can build value added services. This should decrease the time to market for new product offerings and lower investment costs. The net result will be increased productivity in the industry and faster delivery of new capabilities via the cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the past several years, we\u2019ve also learned from deploying OCP hardware at scale in our datacenters \u2013 over 90% of the servers we currently purchase are based on OCP contributed specifications. As we look to the future, we know we need to keep pace with tremendous growth in the cloud, support a broad spectrum of workloads including emerging cloud services, and enable easy scaling across global datacenter regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n