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发帖数: 3492 | 1 Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:17:24 PDT
GigaOM takes a look at how Apple's data center in Maiden, North Carolina
came to be, interviewing Catawba County Economic Development Corporation
president Scott Millar for the story behind the deal. According to Millar,
Apple was initially interested in building its data center within an
abandoned textile mill in the area, but almost pulled out of the deal
entirely when it decided that the building would be too small for its needs.
Economic development officials in Catawba County, and a data center
development group, had been talking with Apple for months to get the company
interested in setting up its data center in town. Then the developer spent
months making sure that an abandoned mill building — a remnant of the
region’s days as a vibrant textile manufacturing area — would be ready to
house the new facility.
But as Apple executives got closer to making a decision, they suddenly
decided that the building was just too small. It looked like Apple was going
to have to go elsewhere for its massive 500,000 square-foot iCloud data
center.
Ultimately, Catawba County officials were able to save the deal by offering
Apple the 180-acre parcel that had initially been envisioned as a cluster of
smaller data centers and which is now where the company's massive data
center sits.
The report notes that Catawba County entered the data center market in 2005
when Google was searching for a location in the area, although the search
giant ultimately settled on a site in neighboring Caldwell County. But
based on that experience with Google and the groundwork that had been laid
in working with power company Duke Energy on data center needs, Catawba
County continued to scout for other companies interested in East Coast data
center locations.
Apple was introduced to the Maiden site, which had almost been sold off a
year earlier, through an existing relationship with T5 Partners, a data
center development group that visited the area as part of annual site tour
of the region to promote data center development. With the county moving
rapidly to secure the needed site, power capacity, and economic incentives,
it was able to strike a deal with Apple for what is currently the company's
largest data center by far.
Apple has since announced plans for another large data center in Prineville,
Oregon, where it has reportedly already begun building small-scale data
facilities in modular buildings. And just weeks ago, Apple confirmed its
intent to build yet another data center outside of Reno, Nevada, with the
deal also including new facilities in Reno to support "business and
purchasing" needs. |
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