Vibal paves the way for Open Compute Project in Phl

MANILA, Philippines - Interoperability, portability, and open standards: these principles are shared by the Open Compute Project (OCP) Foundation and Vibal Group, a company offering technology solutions for education, enterprise, and government. 

Both organizations also recognize the role that technology can play in moving forward a nation such as the Philippines, with emphasis on utilizing open source and other smart, efficient, green, and cost-effective technologies.

Vibal recently organized a gathering of global technology companies and academic institutions to discuss the possibility of institutionalizing an OCP charter in the Philippines. 

The dialogue, held at the Mapua Institute of Technology in Makati City, was attended by representatives of the Philippine Society of IT Education, DOST-ICTO, Philippine Normal University, HP Singapore, Intel Philippines, Huawei Philippines, and Microsoft Philippines.

“We invite you to join us in this mission to collectively develop the most efficient computing infrastructure possible,” said Charlie Manese, Facebook solutions engineer and vice president of channel development for the Open Compute Project.

The Open Compute Project

Manese shared in the discussion how the project began when a small team of Facebook engineers spent the past two years tackling a big challenge: how to scale its computing infrastructure in the most efficient and economical way possible. The result is a data center full of vanity-free servers which is 38 percent more efficient and 24 percent less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers.

Inspired by the model of open source software, Facebook’s idea is to share the innovations from its data center for the global IT industry to use and improve upon.

With OCP Foundation’s rapidly growing community around the world, Manese, who is a Filipino-American, thought of including the Philippines among their member-countries.  His chance encounter with Vibal Group president and CEO Gus Vibal during a summit abroad paved the way for this plan to come to fruition.

During the summit, Manese welcomed questions from the stakeholders, and repeatedly urged them to discuss collectively on developing the computing infrastructure in the country. 

He also expounded on the potential benefits of open compute based on the scenario of hardware being open in the Philippines and taking into account the increasing pace of innovation, the decrease of technological impact on the environmental, as well as scaling efficiency.

“The success of the initiative lies in the capacity of the technology players in the Philippines to build structure, commit to contribute, and deploy with confidence,” Manese said.

Is it worth doing in Phl?

According to the DOST-ICTO, the world has been benefiting from the talent, resourcefulness, and competitiveness of the global Filipino workforce since the 1980s. While the Philippines has a solid track record of delivering high-value software services, representatives present during the discussion acknowledged that the country may be limited in accommodating infrastructure to actually build data centers.

Despite this challenge, Vibal Group sees opportunities in making the Philippines open compute-ready and eventually contribute to the specifications by educating the public, sponsoring universities through workshops and hackathons, and engaging other stakeholders.

A call to spark collaboration

“Vibal has always been oriented toward open computing. As a technology solutions company, we are committed to shepherd movement forward to set up an OCP charter here in the Philippines and add our voice to the region,” said Vibal.

“Converging partners through this collaborative dialogue is a great start to build awareness and provide mindset sharing on how we can all work together,” he added.

Vibal’s technology arm, Vibe Technologies Inc., has been building its solutions around open source technologies since its incorporation in 2011. 

Efficient methodologies and effective workflows are implemented to generate maximum output, and products are designed to be scalable, custom-ready, and highly innovative. This has led to a number of impressive milestones in mobile software development, including the Philippines’ first consumer e-bookstore using an in-house DRM solution, an internally developed e-reading app that runs in multi platforms (Android, iOS, Windows, Chrome), and an integrated learning management system that can operate online or through a local server.

Vibal’s transition toward technology is indeed promising. This happens when a company is open to all possibilities.