March 2, 2008 6:55 PM PST
Microsoft's supersize data center plans
We are in the midst of the digital land grab for Internet users. And a key building block to serve those billions of users on the planet is tens of thousands of servers in data centers processing the bits.
Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge gives the rumored 12 million square feet of data center space some context:
That's equivalent to filling 65 Wal-Mart Supercenters with servers. It would be a computing footprint more than twice the size of the Vatican; an expansion more than half-again as large as IBM's entire 8 million square feet of data center space. And Nick uses the term "first phase."
It should be noted that this 12 million square foot data center plan is not confirmed. But it is in the realm of reality considering Microsoft's ambition to duplicate its 20th century success in this century. In this cloud era, Microsoft could be one of the biggest customers of its enterprise own software.
http://planetsave.com/blog/2008/02/13/microsoft-yahoo-merger-greener-than-google/
Microsoft is putting the cart before the horse. It has to make its online products compelling first. No amount of data center building is going to do that for them, even if fast response times are one factor in customer adoption.
Do I have to list the non-fulfilled promises? Let's start with Vista,...