Creating Ecosystems around open source standards and the Commons is a challenging task that has been taken strategically by many of the dominating brands of our times - such as Google with Android. 

 

For this reason, we wanted to feature one iconic project on the podcast that we often use as a yardstick when debating opportunities to develop truly open ecosystem strategies: the Open Compute Project Foundation, initiated by Facebook in 2011. 

 

Details on what OCP is and does will be shared directly during the podcast by our guests: Steve Helvie, VP of Channel, and Archna Haylock, Community Director at OCP. 

 

In his role, Steve helps to educate organizations on the benefits of open source hardware designs and the value of “community-driven” engineering for the data center. Archna, on the other hand, is responsible for the global community, and involved directly in its governance processes. 

 

In this inspiring conversation - we touch upon the topics of innovation, collaboration and industry change - and our two guests show how openness can provide solutions to an increasing set of global challenges. We explore what’s needed for organizations to collaborate in an open source way, how to view competitors in the ecosystem, and how the definition of a data centre has changed through emerging needs for circularity and sustainability.

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our Medium publication: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast-S2E15-Steve-Helvie-Archna-Haylock 

 

To find out more about Archna’s and Steve’s work:

 

> Archna’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/archnahaylock

> Archna’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArchnaOCP 

> Steve’s LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/steve-helvie-37935712

> Steve’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevehelvie

> Website: https://www.opencompute.org/ 

Other references and mentions:

 

> Boundaryless Whitepaper, New Foundations of Platform-Ecosystem Thinking — Designing Products and Organizations for a changing world, 2020: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/DOWNLOAD-NF

 

> Building Complex Organizations through Simple Constraints: Zappos — with John Bunch: https://stories.platformdesigntoolkit.com/building-complex-organizations-through-simple-constraints-zappos-with-john-bunch-a2aaa916663e

 

> Open Networking Foundation: https://opennetworking.org/ 

 

> Telecom Infra Project (TIP): https://telecominfraproject.com/ 

 

> The Linux Foundation: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/

 

> IEEE: https://www.ieee.org/

 

> Mozilla, Open Source Archetypes: A framework For

 Purposeful Open Source, 2018: https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/MZOTS_OS_Archetypes_report_ext_scr.pdf

 

> GAIA-X: https://data-infrastructure.eu/

 

> OpenUK: https://openuk.uk/

 

> Future of Sustainable Data Alliance: https://futureofsustainabledata.com/

 

> OCP Future Technologies Symposium: https://www.opencompute.org/summit/ocp-future-technologies-symposium

 

> Kubernetes:https://kubernetes.io/ 

 

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast

 

Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music

 

Recorded on 7 April 2021.