March 3, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Microsoft (microsoft.com) is speculated to be building out two-dozen data centers, each spanning approximately 500,000 square feet, in an effort to accelerate its cloud computing initiative.
According to business and IT blog RoughType (roughtype.com/archives/2008/03/rumor_microsoft_1.php), Microsoft is looking to aggressively accelerate its investment in its data center network and the first phase of the build out will include the construction of 24 data centers, totaling approximately 12 million square feet of data center space. To give some perspective, Data Center Knowledge says that's equivalent to filling 65 Wal-Mart Supercenters with servers and a mirrors a computing footprint more than twice the size of the Vatican.
Despite Microsoft's urgency with what it considers to be a cornerstone of its cloud computing strategy, the timing of the construction has been left unclear.
If these speculations are true, it fits in line with an interview Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently did with the Financial Times where he said that Microsoft would be one of "the new super-group of tech companies" that could dominate the cloud computing market, next to Amazon and Google, another company rumored to be eyeing the cloud computing space.
What's the "Cloud Computing Market" and "Cloud Computing Space"? I'm guessing that it's in reference to the "Internet Cloud" that everyone draws in their flow chart? Thanks for clarification. posted by: Craig Brown | March 03, 2008 04:06PM
Craig,
"Cloud computing" is one of the terms people are using to refer to the idea of selling computing power on an as-needed basis from a grid of computing resources as opposed to renting a single server with certain specs or a hosting package with set bandwidth and storage limits.
Probably the best in-production examples of that kind of service are Amazon's EC2 and S3 (aws.amazon.com).
They also call it "grid computing" (though I'm told that may not refer to precisely the same thing).
Hope that helps. posted by: Liam Eagle | March 03, 2008 04:14PM
