Vibal and Facebook bring tech giants together for a
collaborative dialogue
on open source in the Philippines
(L) Mr. Charlie
Manese, Facebook Solutions Engineer and VP of Channel Development for Open
Compute Project
and (R) Mr. Gaspar Vibal, President of
Vibal Group of Companies, team up for the Open Compute Initiative
MANILA,
2013 – 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 from 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%
more efficient and 24% 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 I.T. industry to use and
improve upon.
With OCP Foundation’s rapidly
growing community around the world, Manese, who is 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 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 noted.
Is it worth doing in the Philippines?
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 towards 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 Mr. Gus 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
towards technology is indeed promising. This happens when a company is open to
all possibilities.Press Release.
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