“The launch of two new features into the Open Compute hardware specifications on Wednesday has managed to do what Facebook has been threatening to do since it began building its vanity-free hardware back in 2010,” writes GigaOM. These new features mean Facebook has “blown up the server,” says the article, adding that the server has been reduced “to interchangeable components.”

According to IDC estimates, the server business will have earned around $55 billion in revenue in 2012. Following the release of Facebook’s new features, GigaOM suggests that the multi-billion dollar industry has been “killed.”

What has Facebook done, exactly? According to GigaOM: “Facebook has contributed a consistent slot design for motherboards that will allow customers to use chips from any vendor. Until this point, if someone wanted to use AMD chips as opposed to Intel chips, they’d have to build a slightly different version of the server.”

“The other innovation that’s worth noting on the Open Compute standard is that Intel plans to announce a super-fast networking connection based on fiber optics that will allow data to travel between the chips in a rack. This 100 gigabit Ethernet photonic connector is something Intel plans to announce later this year.” Facebook will put it into production in the social network’s data centers.

This is all very significant, writes GigaOM: “Open Compute has managed to give customers — from financial services firms to Web properties — a platform on which to build custom and modular servers.”

This development could prove beneficial for those in Web-based businesses and those reliant on IT, since they could potentially cut waste and turn the system into an easily upgradable (and cheaper) asset.