On Monday, data center builder and operator Digital Realty Trust announced that it had named Jim Smith its new chief technology officer. Smith, who had previously served as VP of engineering at the company, is the first person to hold the CTO role. He will direct the implementation of data center technologies at the company. According to Digital Realty, Smith was also named among InfoWorld's "Top 25 Chief Technology Officers for 2008," largely for the company's involvement in green data center initiatives.

On Tuesday, Rackspace division Mosso reported that it had named Bruce Runyan its chief uptime officer. As with Digital Realty Trust, the CUO position is a new position for the company. But more than that, the title is most likely an industry first. The company says Runyan will be responsible for ensuring that Mosso continues providing a reliable customer experience as the cloud scales, and enabling the company to introduce new capabilities and capacity without impacting experience.

On Thursday, we posted an email interview with Runyan, who described the process that led the company to consolidate that set of responsibilities around a newly created position. He also discusses some of the unique business challenges the "cloud" brings to the company, and how other companies developing cloud-based offerings might need to similarly develop their oversight to deal with those challenges.

Along with the several new appointments this week, there was a small selection of data center announcements that accounted for a fairly hefty amount of money.

Rarely one to operate on the small scale, IBM reported Wednesday that it plans to spend $300 million this year building 13 "cloud computing" based data centers to provide disaster recovery services to its user base around the world. The company says the facilities will locate the facilities in 10 countries.

On Thursday, Canadian data center operator Q9 Networks reported plans to build a $50 million data center facility in Calgary, Alberta. The company operates a range of data centers across the country, including an existing facility in Calgary, the center of Canada's energy trade and its fastest growing city.

Pushing this weeks imaginary "announced data center spending" red bar very close to the $1 billion mark, Microsoft announced firmed-up plans on Thursday for a previously announced Iowa data center. The company says it plans to spend $500 million building a facility in West Des Moines, becoming a popular location, with a $600 million data center announced by Google earlier this year. The Microsoft facility will use the container technology employed in other of the company's recently-constructed facilities.

While none of this week's major news stories screams "important follow-up," at the very least it will be interesting to see if Mosso's creation of the chief uptime officer creates any significant ripples in the cloud computing business during the months to come.