Gabe Cole of RTE Group, Inc., was appointed chairman of The Data Center Standards Subcommittee of the Open IX Association. The Open IX Association is a community of data center providers, network providers, and bandwidth consumers that have joined together with the common goal of providing fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory standards for Internet connectivity, resiliency, security, and cost. The organizational standards that are being developed by the Association are divided into two subcommittees, Data Center and IXP.

"The Open-IX Association's initiatives are a critical first step in encouraging an industry that has thus far been fragmented and thereby, unable to achieve efficiencies. Its standards will create an atmosphere that will benefit service providers, enterprises, and consumers," said Cole.

While the IXP Subcommittee is focusing on open platform Internet Exchange Points that enable providers to interact and exchange content, The Data Center Subcommittee's charge is to create minimum standards for the design and operation of the facilities housing the Internet Exchange Points. "Industry backed standards for these two critical elements will help to drive down costs, expand power solutions, and increase reliability to provide a superior product to the bandwidth consumer," added Cole.

The Open IX Association is a group of individuals employed in the content, cloud, network, and data center industries, along with consumers that are driving an open discussion on neutral network exchange points in the United States with the goal of creating beneficial industry standards. Membership is open to any interested individual, data center operator, or Internet exchange operator.

Founded in 1993, RTE Group, Inc., provides strategic consulting, brokerage services, technology implementation, and transformation services for data centers, network exchanges, and other mission critical facilities.