The folks at Open Compute Project are on a roll, driving open source ideas into servers, data centers, racks, etc.

And now their latest move is networking.

With that in mind, we are today announcing a new project within OCP that will focus on developing a specification and a reference box for an open, OS-agnostic top-of-rack switch. Najam Ahmad, who runs the network engineering team at Facebook, has volunteered to lead the project, and a wide variety of organizations — including Big Switch Networks, Broadcom, Cumulus Networks, Facebook, Intel, Netronome, OpenDaylight, the Open Networking Foundation, and VMware — are already planning to participate.

Facebook is a big sponsor of Open Compute Project which is non-profit organization, and a driving force.

Who competes against Open Compute Project? The visibility for Open Compute Project has increased and is referenced by almost all the tech media point with an article at some point. There isn't really much competition.

What Open Compute Project does threaten is the event conference vendors. When you have a non-profit focused on end user benefits and changing the industry, the for profit event staff who are driven to maximize revenue will maneuver to out market their event as the premier event in the industry. Note: watch for those words when someone claims they are the premier event.

BTW isn't it ironic that Interop has Frank keynote what a message that Open Compute Project is revolutionizing the industry.

Location: Mandalay Bay H
Wednesday, May 8, 2013, 8:30 AM-10:15 AM

Billions of people and their many devices will be coming online in the next decade, and those who are already online are living ever-more connected lives. The industry is building out a huge physical infrastructure to support this growth, but we are doing so in a largely closed fashion, inhibiting the pace of innovation and preventing us from achieving the kinds of efficiencies that might otherwise be possible.

In this keynote, Frank Frankovsky will provide an overview of the Open Compute Project, a thriving consumer-led community dedicated to addressing this issue, promoting more openness and a greater focus on scale, efficiency, and sustainability in the development of infrastructure technologies. Frank will delve into the brief history of the project and describe its vision for the future.

Seems like Interop just gave Frank a chance to market to the audience they need to go to the next Open Compute Summit and attend for free. Or be a sponsor where there is more transparency in how their sponsorship is used.

We'll see what kind of networking guys show up to the next Open Compute Summit. In some data center IT environments the network gear can be 50% of the IT budget. Networks are important, but it is hard for most to accept a 50% spend.