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Microsoft’s general manager in charge of data centers, Mike Manos has posted a blog saying the company planned to continue its Chicago and Dublin data centers which would open “as customer demand warrants.”
Manos, writing with Arne Josefsberg general manager for infrastructure at global foundation services, said Microsoft had been preparing for lean times for a while following October's release which said that capital expenditure on data centers would be down by $300 million this year.
“Frugality drives innovation and limited resources are just another forcing function to develop creative solutions to infrastructure needs.”
Manos said Microsoft was working to continue to raise utilisation of its servers and “our research and engineering teams have developed some interesting and innovative approaches to increasing power densities that help us get more capacity out of our existing resrouces.”
“Thanks to the efficiencies we’ve gained through these ongoing efforts, we will be able to delay the construction and opening of some of our facilities, which will save Microsoft and its shareholders significant operating expenses, going a long way towards meeting the goals that Microsoft announced this week. For instance we’re postponing construction of the data center in Iowa that we recently purchased land for. We are still continuing construction of our facilities in Chicago and Dublin, and are planning to open them as customer demand warrants. But given the current economic climate we’re going to do the right thing for our business and shareholders and revisit our plans on a quarter-by-quarter basis. On other fronts, we are expanding existing capacity and making improvements for our other co-location facilities, like Amsterdam, that strengthen our global footprint and help us meet growing demand for online services for businesses.”
In the same post Manos said Microsoft's plans for a $500 million Des Moines data center had been delayed.
"The bottom line is that despite the problems the economy is going through, our online services businesses are growing. We expect that more companies will turn to our services to save money – by allowing them to decrease overhead costs – and that software developers will increasingly use the flexibility and low cost of entry of our new Azure platform. We have been busy “building a better mouse trap” for these type of scenarios and are now turning up the dial on our efficiency efforts. Thanks to a lot of hard work and innovation by our team in recent years, we are prepared to address market changes – without requiring Microsoft to skip a beat in moving its Online, Cloud, and Live service businesses forward."
Keywords: Data center, Power, Economic, Efficiency | |
