Apple is about to build a 500,000 square feet data center space in North Carolina. At that size it would place it among the largest data centers in the world.
Apple’s current data center in Newark is a little over 100,000 square feet, while most data centers around the world don’t pass the 200,000 square feet mark.
According to the Charlotte Observer, the site is primarily to support iTunes and App Stores. That means that Apple is looking at taking over some of the services provided by firms like Akamai to stream media and apps to Apple devices.
But what if there’s more to it? A competing Apple search engine, free Mobile Me, a huge investement into cloud computing?
Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge certainly believes so:
“Cloud computing is a hot trend, and I’d be surprised if Apple isn’t thinking hard – and thinking differently – about cloud computing,” says Miller. “The companies that are building the biggest data centers tend to also have the biggest cloud ambitions.”
The facility is expected to require roughly $1 billion in investment over the majority of a decade, while generating thousands of jobs.
If indeed it’s for cloud computing and especially for free MobileMe then it’s ROCKING. Plus, it can be for all these aspects (itunes/appstore, cloud, mobileme, etc). Go, go Apple!
I doubt that Apple has any plans to enter the traditional “cloud computing” market.
But they may be very interested in streaming their own videos to iPhone devices, Apple TV, etc.
Offer better e-mail (with video clips) can take a lot of bandwidth and storage, thus require a lot of cloud power.
The growth of the App Store may also justify a large data center. But Apple wouldn’t let you rent your own virtual CPU, that’s so against their integrated approach.
pls
Apple tablet will be running more sophisticated apps., plus cloud storage for enhanced mobile me – tiny hd on tablet and big cloudspace for data and streaming. Appple will need one in Europe too – we are already scouring planning applications to find where!
I wonder if in a few months we will read this post again and go ‘Of course! In hindsight it is so obvious. Why didn’t we see it coming!”
think the data center will be used to backup Steve. His body is failing him; he won’t accept that.