The Linux Foundation, announced it will host the Open19 Foundation, an open hardware platform for data center and edge hardware innovation. It is also announcing that one of the original founders of the Open19 project, Yuval Bachar, is joining the Linux Foundation to lead this effort. 
Open19 focuses on hardware standards that enable compute, storage and network manufacturers and end users to develop differentiated hardware solutions while protecting their competitive intellectual property. With the addition of Open19, The Linux Foundation is hosting data center hardware and software under one virtual roof.
“As the open hardware project of The Linux Foundation, the Open19 Project is dedicated to creating solutions that help digital businesses take advantage of specialized infrastructure,” said Zachary Smith, Open19 Foundation chairperson and Managing Director of Equinix Metal. “We are excited to join The Linux Foundation to solve the challenges facing modern data centers with collaborative, open, community-led innovation.”
Open19 provides a framework for accessing and deploying hardware innovation at any scale, from edge environments to large-scale custom clouds. With its unique intellectual property model and market-leading specifications with proven adoption, Open19 enables technology providers, supply chain partners, cloud service providers, telecoms and tech forward enterprises to leverage shared investments to address the exploding needs of modern compute and network deployments while minimizing risk. This reduces time to market for new solutions while substantially lowering the cost of operations.
“Open19 is revolutionizing the way we approach hardware,” said Yuval Bachar, Open19 Foundation Fellow. “The time to invest in open hardware has never been more pressing. With the transformation happening as a result of AI, 5G and edge networking, in particular, the opportunity for innovation is ripe, and Open19 will accelerate it.”
Yuval Bachar founded the Open19 project and is returning to support the project and its community under the Linux Foundation. His career includes technical leadership roles at Microsoft, LinkedIn, Facebook and Cisco. Bachar has been on the forefront of some of the industry’s most important technology developments, from data center networking to data center self healing with Machine Learning, AI and predictive maintenance. Most recently, he was Principal Hardware Architect of the Azure Platform at Microsoft. Previously, he was Principal Engineer in the global infrastructure and strategy team at LinkedIn, the leader and architect for Facebook’s data center networking hardware and Senior Director of Engineering in the CTO office at Cisco.
The Linux Foundation provides an open governance model and a vendor neutral home to a variety of projects working to advance open hardware and data center innovation. This framework nurtures cross-project collaboration among Open19, DPDK, OpenBMC, and RISC-V projects; the LF Edge, OpenPower and Cloud Native Computing Foundations; and incubating projects such as bare metal provisioning engine Tinkerbell, among others. Formal collaborations are expected to be announced in the coming months.
“The Open19 Community has been doing crucial work to accelerate open source hardware design to meet the needs of modern data centers and the edge,” said Arpit Joshipura, General manager, Networking, Edge & IOT at The Linux Foundation. “We are excited to welcome Open19 as our growing community defines the next generation of digital infrastructure.”
