The disruptive power of Microsoft’s Open Compute Group move has spurred debate. Let’s talk image versus cold hard revenues.

Microsoft surprised the tech industry Tuesday when it joined the open-source hardware movement, announcing on the Open Compute Summit in San Jose that it is going to offer the Open Compute Project (OCP) specifications utilized in Microsoft datacenters in addition to code for server management software.

Microsoft’s participation speaks to the changing trajectory of the datacenter. In a report released last week called “Predictions for 2014: Private Cloud Management and Infrastructure,” the research firm Forrester forecast the proliferation of OCP-compliant and other low-cost, open-source commodity servers.

At least one expert, however, isn’t convinced Microsoft’s participation is a transparent game-changer. “It’s interesting,” said Gartner VP Jeffrey Hewitt in a phone interview. “However probably won’t be a tremendous thing.”

[For more on Microsoft’s move to open source, see Microsoft Makes Azure Server Design Open-Source.]

Hewitt said Microsoft’s interest in OCP could yield benefits, but is probably going more exploratory at this point. He noted that the internet companies that use OCP-compliant tech are usually committed to Linux, which makes a shift to Microsoft’s comparatively byzantine OS licensing models a tricky sell.

So what’s in it for Microsoft? One perk is validation within the open-source community, said Hewitt. He also noted that Microsoft should gain from OCP’s collaborative nature.

“OCP was fundamentally an effort to disrupt things,” he said, explaining that Facebook founded the project since it is a core a part of its business, which suggests every IT dollar saved translates on to the company’s base line.

By eschewing expensive OEM servers in favor of customized designs built with cheap commodity components, Facebook was ready to improve efficiency while reducing costs. The corporate advanced this idea with OCP, arguing that crowdsourced development would drive the creation of low-cost, highly efficient hardware. The collaboration offers two theoretical benefits: improved technology, and increased demand for OCP-compliant servers that are supposed to push the price of commodity components even lower.

The project has attracted formidable supporters, including chipmaker Intel and investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. “Now isn’t a foul time for Microsoft to assert, ‘We’re going to be a participant,'” Hewitt said.

Plus, by sharing designs used to support its Azure datacenters, Microsoft couldn’t only drive down its own infrastructure costs, but in addition persuade at the least some businesses and cloud providers to construct out designs in keeping with Windows technology. “It is all form of intertwined,” said Hewitt.

Still, Hewitt doesn’t expect Microsoft to look a right away revenue bump from its OCP involvement. For something, the project’s emphases aren’t for everyone, he said. Open-source datacenters are popular among web companies but less widely adopted elsewhere, he explained, because they require a specific amount of workmanship to implement and sure conditions to cause them to cost-effective and efficient.

Hewitt said Microsoft’s OCP participation could negatively impact the company’s relationship with server OEMs — but he doubts it. “Certain customers want support and do not mind paying a software license,” he said. “[These customers are] different than someone who might write their very own code and work on open source.”

For now, Hewitt said, Microsoft faces little risk in supporting OCP, however it may gain advantage from the likelihood to declare, “We’re on this game, not running clear of it.”

Michael Endler joined InformationWeek as an associate editor in 2012. He graduated from Stanford in 2005 and previously worked in talent representation, as a contract copywriter and photojournalist, and as a teacher.

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