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Apple Officially Selects North Carolina for New $1 Billion Data Center
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Don't they know that Michigan - which really needs some new employers 
- has a better climate for apples?
- has a better climate for apples?
In another thread, someone had posted a map of the "backbone of the internet," where most of the internet traffic flows through, and there's a major junction (like probably the largest in the country) in North Carolina. That means they have lower latency to worry about in addition to the tax incentives NC offered them.
jW
Buy Adobe for what?
Maybe they're going to be lowering the price of MobileMe to compete with Google's services, and they expect lots of new customers. Not many people are interested in the $100-a-year service of MobileMe, but if they bring it down to $30, a lot of average people may be interested.
Sure, this might anger a few people who have been paying the $100 a year lately, but ...
Google's services don't do everything Mobileme does.
These counties are ~250 - 300 miles inland. They typically just get some rain when a hurricane comes up the east coast.
They can build data centers that withstand winds over 300mph. You start with 12in thick concrete walls. Keeping the power reliable would be the only concern, which Im sure they address. If the power gets cut and the center has to rely on the backup generators (diesel) it should be able to run for a few days before needing more fuel.
You missed all the posts so far about nukes and cheap power? (also cheap coal power there too, but willing to bet Apple might not stress that part.) That's a bigger tipping point than network backbone. Willing to bet the electric bill every month is still higher than the network bill (even at the low rates they are getting by locating there).
More importantly though, there is EXCESS power available. Google, Microsoft, etc are hunting in areas that had high power consumers and now are shutdown (e.g., large number of closed factories usually does this if they weren't co-generating their own power). Makes no sense to go somewhere were plugging in a new "small town" of power would make the grid flaky.
There are lots of places where can plug into the major arteries of the internet. However, not all of them are going to give you the right combo of no taxes (for extended period of time) , cheap power , excess power , suitable real estate to sit on with some privacy, environmentally suittable (no multiple threats) and cheap, cool water if installing major water chillers.
[ that's said I don't get what microsoft was thinking with something in Texas. Natural chilling is cheaper and more effective. Makes no sense to go somewhere it is very warm most of the year. You don't want data centers where the temp tops 100 with regularity during some months. ]
Also far away from California (the other data center(s) ), but not too far.
That gives them disaster recovery options (e.g., major earthquake in CA fail over to NC or major storm in NC fail over to CA ) and well as load balancing options ( East Coast and Euro/ME/Afr traffic to NC and west coast and AsiaPac traffic to CA ).
One billion for the datacenter, and another billion for all these sea cables to connect to the USA and Europe...
Thanks. I guess maybe it's not huge, it's just highlighted (thus my memory was off), but it is considered one of the major junctions.
jW
Because I work in the Creative Entertainment field, and have for multiple years and firms, and can tell you that people get very tired of the Apple Adobe pissing contest.
I uploaded that map in the other thread. The map highlights Greenboro because the map came from the Greenboro, N.C. Economic Development Alliance site. The Greenboro area offers direct ties to the Tier 1 Internet backbone, so yes you're right on the "mainline" of the Internet. Catawba County is only about 100 miles west of Greenboro.
Ironically, the county seat of Catawba County is......Newton.
LOL, very appropriate.
jW
That is not a map of the USA internet backbone, it is a very outdated map of a single network albeit most likely a tier 1 provider. The following link will take you to a map of the Qwest network for the USA though again, this is not a map of the entire USA internet backbone - just 1 of the 10 tier 1 networks. :
http://www.qwest.com/about/qwest/network/
To put this map in context to the other map, you'll see most of the main links are using OC-192 lines which run at 10Gbit/s compared to the DS-3 45Mbit/s lines on the other map.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)
Lenoir.
marco114 said:
Lenoir.