Microsoft gives cloud server designs to Facebook’s Open Compute Project

Microsoft is contributing the designs of the cloud servers that run some of its services like Bing and Windows Azure to the Open Compute Project, in a bid to help standardize and reduce hardware costs. The company is also contributing system management source code to the project. It said it aimed to create an open source software community in the Open Compute Project.

The fifth summit of the Open Compute Project is happening on Tuesday, and Microsoft has revealed that it is the latest member to join the group, a Facebook-founded initiative that sees the company and its partners commit to developing and sharing designs for data center infrastructure. Bill Laing, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for cloud and enterprise, says in a blog post that Microsoft will contribute what it calls its “cloud server specification” to OCP — referring to the designs for server hardware in Microsoft data centers that are being deployed for its largest global cloud services including Windows Azure, Bing, and Office 365.