NEXTDC Limited (ASX: NXT), Australia’s leading Data-Centre-as-a-Service provider, today announced the formation of a new ONEDC® developer community to drive the adoption of the Open Building Information Exchange (oBIX) standard (created by OASIS) and advance Data Centre Intelligence (DCI). This project has already attracted the attention and support of some of the world’s leading proponents of open source and the Internet of Things, including Intel, Red Hat and Opengear.
By integrating data centres’ interrelated hardware systems with oBIX, previously inaccessible real-time information that is crucial to efficient, effective data centre operations becomes available from a single location – a paradigm shift that will form the basis of the ONEDC SaaS Data Centre Intelligence platform.
The ONEDC oBIX project provides developers, researchers and OEMs with an easy-to-use API and server mechanism to access hardware data in real-time using standard web technologies such as HTTP, while providing data from hardware in XML or JSON formats, and drive a unified, open standard for hardware interfaces.
“OASIS is delighted to see open source projects flowing from the wellspring of open standards; clearly, open source and open standards have much to offer each other," said Laurent Liscia, CEO of OASIS. "With all the focus on the cloud, people often forget that data centres are buildings too. We're excited to see NEXTDC deliver on its commitment to openness, not just by leveraging the oBIX standard in ONEDC SaaS, but by going the extra mile and making the ONEDC oBIX API completely open.”
Why utilise a developer community?
“At the core of our DCI strategy is the oBIX protocol”, said Paul Gampe, NEXTDC’s Chief Technology Officer. “We believe that a simple and secure web service interface is critical to successfully delivering on the vision of the Internet of Things.”
“As Australia’s leading Data-Centre-as-a-Service provider we have had to overcome the challenge of monitoring thousands of touch points inside our data centre network, as well as our customers’ complex physical and virtual assets and connectivity points.”
“When we looked around the industry for a solution there wasn’t one, so we set about using the knowledge we have acquired to solve the problem, and we are sharing it with the industry to drive faster and broader development of Data Centre Intelligence.”
“The best way to build secure, reliable software is by harnessing the power of the open source community and open standards, so the main focus of the ONEDC oBIX development team is to provide a stable framework that makes it easy for hardware vendors and software developers alike to integrate hardware capabilities into an open web platform, and solve the central data centre management problem: How do you communicate with specialised equipment in an efficient and secure manner?”
Harnessing the power of open source
“The ONEDC® developer community is moving away from hardware and vendor-specific DCIM technologies and focussing on DCI,” Mr Gampe continued, “because the vast majority of existing DCIM products are either company-specific customisations or are designed for an individual hardware vendor.”
“By integrating and enabling hardware reporting and alerts not previously possible with proprietary software, the open source nature of the ONEDC SaaS platform will make it a leader in the Data Centre Intelligence industry.”
The study Market Monitor: Datacenter Infrastructure Management Systems (6/2014) by leading IT research and advisory company, 451 Research, shows that demand for DCIM software is building rapidly: in 2013 DCIM revenue was estimated at $621M, and is now predicted to grow at a 42 per cent CAGR to a projected $1,838M in 2016 – an increase of 196 per cent in three years. In terms of scale, Gartner Research's report Market Trends: Total Addressable Market DCIM (11/2012) indicates that by 2017, DCIM will be deployed in 60 per cent of larger data centres in North America, which is why Gartner believes that the market for DCIM tools is globally now “north of $1 billion”.
Bob Waldie, Chairman at Opengear, said "Opengear have long been vocal proponents of open-source infrastructure management in the data centre, one of the last remaining holdouts of proprietary and vendor-locked, bespoke software. Upon previewing an alpha build, we realised the potential of ONEDC as a means to add value rapidly and at scale to our open source Infrastructure Manager appliances, Lighthouse central management service, and for our customers to easily extend and adapt their installs with open API mash-ups to defeat vendor lock-in. We're excited to be a member of the ONEDC community at the time of launch."
A few words from our supporters
"As a company Intel offers solutions from the edge device to the cloud, and everything in between. Our focus on the Internet of Things spans from Quark to Xeon; devices to data centres; hardware and software; security and services. Intel delivers products and technologies that embed intelligence into everyday objects to connect and share data and enable the connected world. We are delighted to be involved with the creation of the ONEDC® open source community to drive the development of advanced data centre infrastructure management solutions; if it computes, it does it best with Intel." Matthew Jones, Group Manager, Industry Development, Intel Corporation.
"As the leading provider of open source solutions, Red Hat is committed to helping create, foster and grow open source communities across the world, as we believe deeply in community-powered innovation. With the growing importance of unified, cross-environment data centres and the Internet of Things, we are pleased to see the launch of the oBIX server open source project as it aims to bring an open source alternative to the data centre infrastructure management." Lars Herrmann, Senior Director, Product and Business Strategy, Red Hat, Inc.