The OpenPOWER foundation has announced the election of John Zannos from Canonical as Chair, and Calista Redmond, IBM, as President of the OpenPOWER Foundation Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2016.
Zannos and Redmond bring deep knowledge of the open technology development community and familiarity with the Foundation’s core mission, as both have been playing key roles within the Foundation since 2014. The new leadership will continue to guide the development of OpenPOWER-based technology solutions built on IBM’s POWER architecture.
Former chair, Gordon MacKean of Google, and president, Brad McCredie of IBM, will remain close advisors to the OpenPOWER Foundation, serving as non-voting board advisors to provide technical and strategic roadmap guidance as appropriate.
‘Over the last two years, the OpenPOWER Foundation and our 175 members have created an ecosystem that thrives on innovation. Working together on POWER’s open architecture has enabled us to customise across the stack and create new solutions that wouldn’t be possible without this level of cross-industry collaboration,’ said Gordon MacKean, former Chair of and current advisor to the Board, OpenPOWER Foundation, and current Senior Director, Hardware Platforms, Google. MacKean welcomed the new leadership stating: ‘With a strong passion and commitment to open technology, our new leaders will continue to guide the Foundation’s underlying mission, bringing the industry to foster collaboration and develop advanced technology solutions that solve the evolving needs of today’s datacentre customers.’
During the OpenPOWER Foundation’s first two years, MacKean and McCredie played instrumental roles in forming the essential building blocks of the organization, growing the Foundation from five founding members to more than 170 members in more than 22 countries. Under their guidance, these members have worked collaboratively on hundreds of innovations and brought more than 25 solutions to market, including several from members TYAN, Suzhou PowerCore, IBM, Canonical, Redis Labs, Nallatech, Convey and Alpha-Data.
‘The OpenPOWER Foundation has moved from rethinking the datacentre to revolutionizing it, embracing openness across both hardware and software,’ said OpenPOWER foundation chair, John Zannos. ‘As the OpenPOWER Foundation enters its third year and next phase of evolution, we will continue to expand the ecosystem of hardware and software providers committed to openness and innovation on the POWER platform. There is enormous need and potential to change the datacentre and deliver unprecedented choice and value to the industry, and I look forward to helping drive this change in the coming year.’
