Facebook Inc. chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg plans to share the social-networking site’s data-center and server designs with other companies to help the technology industry become more efficient.
The effort, called the Open Compute Project, will provide access to technology Facebook developed with Intel Corp. (INTC), Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) and Dell Inc. (DELL), the Palo Alto, California-based company said today.
Facebook, the world’s largest social-networking service, relies on data centers to serve up photos, status updates and videos to its more than 500 million users. By better regulating computer workloads, power consumption and cooling, the company says data centers can use 38 percent less energy and cost 24 percent less to build.
“We’re not the only ones who need the kind of hardware that we’re building out,” Zuckerberg said today. “By sharing that, we think that there’s going to be more demand for the type of stuff that we needed.”
The move is a break from the past habits of Internet companies, such as Google Inc. (GOOG) and Amazon.com Inc., which have guarded the secrets of their data centers, according to Richard Fichera, an analyst at Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Forrester Research Inc. The payoff for Facebook may come by creating a community of suppliers that make products with the exact specifications it uses, he said in a blog posting.
No disruptions
Facebook, the most visited U.S. website, has added an ever- growing range of features while striving to avoid the kind of disruptions that have plagued rivals, including Twitter Inc. The company’s new data center in Prineville, Oregon, is using the Open Compute technology to handle the increasing loads efficiently, Fichera said.
The company has seen revenue soar as its user base grows and it attracts advertisers such as Starbucks Corp. and JetBlue Airways Corp. Facebook may have reached $2 billion in sales last year, three people familiar with the matter said in December.
Facebook announced in January that it raised $1.5 billion from investors led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., placing a $50 billion valuation on the closely held business.
The company, founded in 2004, passed Google last year to become the most visited website in the U.S., according to Experian Hitwise, an Internet-tracking firm in New York.
