Microsoft has made no secret about its plans to expand its current business model with a stronger emphasis on selling software as a service (SaaS), and it is working hard to get enough computational muscle to meet the demand. Like Google, Microsoft is building massive data centers across the world, with "tens of thousands" of servers at the Quincy location, according to a Reuters report. Software as a Service, Moore's law, and virtualization are all driving enterprise IT towards denser installations where a single rack of hardware can do the job that required an entire room in days gone by.
With this much power concentrated in ever smaller packages the price of computing is starting to be more about the energy required to run the systems than the initial investment in the hardware. The Reuters article also quotes Mike Manos, the guy in charge of Microsoft's data centers as saying that they take 31 criterion into consideration when deciding where to put a data center.
This news ties into Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's statements yesterday at the Townhall Event reguarding software as a service as being central to the company's future. Its ongoing focus on SaaS and the Windows Live brand means you can expect more of the megasized data centers to crop up in the future.
reader comments