Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has announced that representatives from global IT leaders Infosys and SAP are the newest members of the ODCA Steering Committee and have joined the ODCA Board of Directors. Senior executives from Infosys and SAP join ODCA board members from BMW, Capgemini, China Unicom, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Inc., NAB, NTT Data, T-Systems, UBS, Verizon Terremark and The Walt Disney Company in driving the strategic direction and output of ODCA on a global basis.

"The expansion of the leadership team marks the significant momentum ODCA is experiencing in global markets and comes as enterprises worldwide increasingly rely on ODCA usage models and requirements for easing and speeding the migration of data center IT operations to the cloud," said Mario Mueller, ODCA chair and VP of IT Infrastructure at BMW. "We welcome the deep industry experience Infosys and SAP bring to ODCA and look forward to the contributions these two companies will bring to advancing the next generation of enterprise ready cloud and big data implementations based on ODCA usage models and requirements."

"Infosys is delighted to be on the steering committee of the ODCA. ODCA's vision of defining interoperable and secure Cloud environment based on standardized usage models is strategically aligned with Infosys' vision of delivering a unified Cloud ecosystem for enterprises. I believe our association with ODCA will significantly accelerate the realization of this vision and adoption of cloud," said Vishnu G Bhat, Senior Vice President, Global Head, Cloud and Big Data, Infosys.

"The cloud is of vital strategic importance to SAP, both as a cloud consumer and as a market leader for enterprise cloud solutions," said Martin Heisig, senior vice president, HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP AG. "SAP has made significant investments in the cloud in the last few years, and we recognize that joining the ODCA is important in helping us evolve our cloud solutions. On the other hand, we believe SAP can contribute to the ODCA work with the experiences we have gained so far."

ODCA was launched in 2010 and since then its membership has grown to include hundreds of leading companies from around the world. The organization has released over 25 usage models and requirements documents focused on enterprise cloud computing and big data and including Compute Infrastructure as a Service (CIaaS), Cloud Based Identity Governance and Auditing, Data Security, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Scale-out Storage and Software Defined Networking (SDN). These usage models have been instrumental in the development of new products from cloud vendors and solution providers and when specified using PEAT, ODCA's online Proposal Engine Assistant Tool, have proven to dramatically streamline enterprise cloud RFP (Request for Proposal) processes.

ODCA announced that Infosys and SAP joined ODCA as Contributing Members in June during Forecast 2013, ODCA's premier annual event where ODCA leadership and its members come together with industry to address enterprise ready cloud computing. A complete list of adopter, contributing and solution provider members is available on the ODCA website. A list of ODCA board members, including individual bios and headshots, is available on the ODCA leadership team page.