Facebook’s Status Update for Computing - NYTimes.com

An Open Compute Project update

"The company announced on Tuesday that it would give away designs of two crucial elements of its enormous computing centers, both computer servers and networking. These designs and others like them will be offered as products from several other manufacturers, along with a significant amount of supporting software from other companies.

Facebook also noted that its designs had saved the company $2 billion in the last three years, compared with using conventional computing equipment.

If the new designs become popular, it could mean new pain for the large incumbent computer-hardware makers, like Cisco and Dell, which for several years have faced inroads from open-source software. The Facebook products involve both hardware and software."

Facebook’s Status Update for Computing - NYTimes.com