Consortium of Global IT Managers Launches with Mission to Define Requirements for Next Generation Data Centers and Cloud Infrastructure

Launched today, The Open Data Center Alliance is a consortium led by global IT organizations who have come together to help plan data center deployments of the future. The primary focus of the organization is to provide a unified vision for long term data center and cloud infrastructure requirements through the development of a vendor-agnostic Usage Model Roadmap.

Previewed today, version 0.5 of the vendor-agnostic Usage Model Roadmap is comprised of 19 prioritized usage models that address emerging technical requirements for data center and cloud infrastructure environments. The model is based entirely on open, interoperable solutions that can be sourced from multiple vendors and interoperate across data centers.

The alliance is led by a steering committee comprised of global IT leaders with over $50 billion in collective IT spending, including BMW; China Life; Deutsche Bank; JPMorgan Chase; Lockheed Martin; Marriott International, Inc.; National Australia Bank; Shell; Terremark; and UBS. Intel Corporation will serve as the Technical Advisor to the organization.

“This new end user alliance puts the power of designing the data center into the hands of IT managers,” said Matthew Eastwood, group vice president, Enterprise Platform Research at IDC. “The Open Data Center Alliance represents the first time such a significant number of end users are committing to an industry organization with the specific goal of defining data center and cloud usage models in an open, industry-standard and multi-vendor fashion.”

The alliance has three levels of membership including Steering Committee, Contributor and Adopter membership. Adopter-level membership in the Alliance is available to anyone who is building cloud or data center infrastructure and is unencumbered by vendor interests. Alliance members have the opportunity to review and comment on the Usage Model Roadmap prior to public distribution, and have access to members-only events and Alliance membership networking opportunities. The Alliance also plans to drive extensive vendor engagement to ensure that Alliance Roadmap and usage model requirements reflect the full scope of industry capability.

“Lockheed Martin is committed to leveraging partnership and innovation to meet its customer missions from reducing costs to increasing performance and optimizing service delivery. The Open Data Center Alliance will facilitate collaboration and provide a Roadmap to industry and government to influence cloud and data center infrastructure and technical requirements,” said Curt Aubley, vice president and CTO of Cyber Security & NexGen Innovation, Lockheed Martin Information Systems & Global Solutions, and Open Data Center Alliance president.

The alliance has established five technical workgroups focused on Infrastructure, Management, Security, Services, and Government & Ecosystem. Each Workgroup will fully define the requirements of each prioritized usage model toward the future delivery of a detailed technical documentation suite to be utilized by vendors and members as guidance for deployments. In addition, the working groups are chartered to finalize the current 0.5 Roadmap with a public delivery of the Roadmap and initial usage models in Q1’11.

“Our experience in the industry through leadership of dozens of industry organizations has demonstrated that when companies work together, innovation is accelerated," said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group at Intel.

For more information visit: www.opendatacenteralliance.org