The plan to move the containers was revealed yesterday by Michael Manos, Microsoft data center services director, during his speech at the Data Center World (datacenterworld.com) conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"The entire first floor of Chicago is going to be containers," said Manos. "This represents our first container data center. The containers are going to be dropped off and plugged into network cabling and power. It's a bold step forward. We're trying to address scale with the cloud level services. We were trying to figure the best way to bring capacity online quickly."

The facility will feature raised floors on the second level, and large trucks will transport the equipment to the site. The massive data center build out will help the company's efforts in Web-based software delivery. Not to mention, using the shipping containers will help Microsoft drastically reduce the facility's build out costs.

The company has already readied other centers across the nation to be used in a similar fashion, as Microsoft goes head to head with rival Google.

Companies such as Sun Microsystems (sun.com) and Rackable (rackable.com), which popularized the containers, are likely to supply Microsoft's containers in the build out. Sun, in particular, is a frontrunner in becoming Microsoft's data center dealer since Rackable announced earlier this year that it only plans to ship 20 to 50 data center containers in 2008.