Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage at the Open Compute Summit to extol the virtues of the Open Compute Project that Facebook launched in 2011. The Open Compute Project is an initiative based around the sharing of the hardware designs and innovations being used in the biggest data centres in the world to create the most efficient server, storage and data centre hardware possible.

It may not sound very exciting when you first read about it, but if you’re reading this article then the chances are that the Open Compute Project affects you. Data centres are some of the most power hungry pieces of technology on the planet, so much so that Greenpeace estimated that they used around 2% of the total global electricity supply in 2011. As South Africans are well aware, with our history of rolling blackouts and load shedding, power supply is a precious commodity. Last year we went underground with Nedbank at its Sandton data centre to see how it was reducing its power usage by upgrading the tech inside.

According to Zuckerberg, the Open Compute Project has not only saved Facebook $1.2 billion in three years, it has also saved enough energy to power 40 000 homes and reduced carbon emissions by the equivalent of 50 000 cars being taken off the roads. Even Microsoft is in on the project now having submitted two of its server designs when it joined this week. They’re not just any old designs either from Microsoft, “it’s the current design in our infrastructure,” according to Windows Azure’s GM Mike Neil.

So the next time you’re uploading your holiday pics onto Facebook remember that the Open Compute Project means that you’re doing less damage to the environment by doing so.

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