TAIPEI, Taiwan — Apple has officially joined the Open Compute Project (OCP), the Facebook-led open source hardware and data center design initiative, which is a boost to Taiwanese ODM firms. It is widely circulated that will be server developers, for instance, Foxconn, Quanta, Wistron, Inventec, and MiTAC.
OCP members have been using the project to develop hardware designs based on open specs and designs that are open sourced through the project. In other words, for end users, the benefit is not only the ability to get custom hardware but also to have multiple vendors supply the same products, which ensures supply and lowers the price.
Taiwanese server developers like Quanta and Wistron joined OCP in a bid to create their own brands, hence, from Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) to become the Own Branding & Manufacturing (OBM).
Apple has a massive data center infrastructure that supports its online services. It is believed that companies as mentioned above that operate large data centers benefit from designing their own hardware, and OCP has become a beachhead for the community of vendors and end users that support this approach.
Above all, Apple Watch will soon be rolled out on April, plus iTunes, App Store, in a light to serve more than 10 billion users annually, Apple is bound to expand more back-end data center infrastructures to cope with the network traffic. Therefore, a boost to Taiwanese server providers.
Last but not the least, OCP is producing specifications and designs in networking, server design, racks, hardware management and certification.
