Microsoft is planning to expand its massive data center in Quincy, Washington. The company is buying a 200-acre property from the Port of Quincy for US$11m, port officials said.

The data center will be three times bigger than Microsoft's current facility on port property and will be the largest in Quincy, which also has data centers by Yahoo, Intuit, Dell and wholesale data center providers Sabey and Vantage. The existing building, sitting on 75 acres, was built in 2007.

The port expects to close the sale in January.

Microsoft is one of the world's most sophisticated data center operators and has one of the largest single-company data center footprints. The infrastructure supports its massive service portfolio, which includes offerings like Bing, MSN, Office 365, Xbox Live, Skype, SkyDrive and Windows Azure.

The company designs, builds and operates its own data centers. It also designs its own servers to optimize for its applications.

Its data center design evolves constantly and the company does not stop experimenting with new ways to build out its infrastructure.

One of the latest experiments with new approaches include bolting an IT module onto a sewage-processing plant and using fuel cells to convert methane from the plant into electricity for the data center module. Another recent experiment is to install fuel cells directly into IT racks to eliminate the need for utility power and electrical distribution equipment between a utility substation and IT equipment.

News of the Quincy expansion comes six months after the company announced it will expand its data center in West Des Moines, Iowa. The company committed to investing a minimum of $677.6m into the expansion, in return for tax incentives approved by local officials.

In September, Microsoft announced plans to build a data center in Finland and received planning permission to build its fourth facility in Dublin. The Dublin expansion will cost about $230m, the company estimated.

Microsoft has also recently expanded infrastructure that supports its Windows Azure public cloud services to data centers in Brazil, Japan, Australia and China.