Page 55 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE AMORPHOUS CL OUD

WHAT DOES A CLOUD
DATA CENTER COST?

Microsoft is building six data centers to power Azure and
its other online services, two in North America (Chicago
and San Antonio, Texas), two in Europe (Dublin, Ireland,

and a second site to be determined), and two in Asia (Hong
Kong and Singapore). The two centers in each region are
linked and are probably designed to back each other up, a
common practice among cloud providers. In fact, Google
is believed to have constructed at least 12 data centers
around the world and various other supporting facilities.
Only Google knows the degree to which these data centers

back each other up, but by design, the Google search en-
gine seems to be always available around the world.
Building paired backup sites is a measure of how heav-
ily the early suppliers of cloud computing have invested
to be at the forefront. From public documents citing the
permits for Microsoft cloud centers, two of them cost about
$1 billion. But Moore’s law, which asserts that the power
of computer chips doubles every two years, will keep re-
ducing the cost of building the equivalent of today’s cloud

data centers. Indeed, cloud computing in the form of the
containerized data center, with a 20- or 40-foot shipping
container dropped off at a site, plugged in as a unit, and
2,000 to 2,500 computers coming to life together, is going
todrivedowndatacenter costs.

(continues)

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