Microsoft’s Data Center Strategy

Everybody these days is talking about the cloud, more and more companies are looking into the cloud promises to extend and improve their business or maybe just looking to save some money. So who do you trust with your data? Who’s “the best” in the cloud? What’s behind the cloud?

There’s an interesting article by Bill Snyder “Why Microsoft won’t dominate the cloud” where he’s laying down arguments on why Microsoft might not be the best company to drive this new movement. However, in my opinion, it is too soon o make any meaningful arguments about the future of the cloud. There’s a not-so-invisible war between Google, Amazon and Microsoft, all of them investing huge amounts of money in new datacenters, software development and marketing.

We’re trying to find more about the people, the hardware and the software behind the cloud. Today we’ll take a look at Microsoft. Introducing Debra Chrapaty, corporate vice president of Global Foundation Services(GFS), responsible for strategy and delivery of the foundational platform for Microsoft Live and Online Services worldwide including security, operational management, networking, globalization and datacenters. Her organization supports MSN and Windows Live branded services, Microsoft communication and collaboration services as well as 150 additional Microsoft services and web portals, including Windows Azure services. She’s the commander in chief with one mission: build the cloud. She’s actually building it and she’s building it “green”. This year at Microsoft Management Summit she discusses lot of concepts about the new green data centers: how to measure and manage, building and running at scale, smart growth, innovate for efficiency and sustainability, operational excellence, every kilowatt counts, environment sustainability.

So what is she building? so far we know about plans build in the next 5 years, 20 supersize data centers that will cost as much as $1 billion each. Is that a lot? Of course it is, and it tells us one thing: Microsoft is dead serious about this business. Of course, it has to catch up with Google which has a good head start. ”We’ve been designing infrastructure for the cloud for years,” says Matt Glotzbach, a manager working on Google Apps for enterprises. “We’ve got a pretty big head start vs. a company like Microsoft.”

In 2007, Chrapaty’s group opened a huge facility in Quincy, WA, to tap into cheap energy of the nearby Grand Coulee Dam, right around the time Google was doing the same thing. Also, it opened a brand new datacenter in San Antonio, TX, 700,000 sq ft., completing most of the work in just nine months. Unlike most data centers out there which are open, warehouse style buildings filled with racks of gear, Microsoft’s new facilities look more like an indoor parking lot, with gear packed into preconfigured shipping containers. Each of the containers can hold 2,500 servers, and a floor can hold up to 224 containers. That’s a potential maximum of 560,000 servers. There’s an advantage to Microsoft’s modular approach. Instead of spending hundreds of hours opening server boxes, connecting them with cables and loading them with software, Microsoft can roll in a container in just a couple of days. This way they can run the facility with half as many people as at its previous sites. Also, it’s easier to monitor and whisk away heat generated in these confined modules than cooling an entire building. Microsoft hopes the design will help cut by one-third the power bills that typically take up some 40% of a site’s operating cost.

With this kind of investment, Microsoft is sure to be one of the main players in the field for the next decade. Will they catch up with Google? Will they beat Amazon? Time will tell, but we know for sure, it’s a close race, where at the end, I hope we, the consumers, will all win.

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