Just what is Apple doing in Maiden?

The Following articles are mainly from the blog Data Center Knowledge. The online source is listed before the Linked article Titles.

Data Center Knowledge - Apple: Maiden iDataCenter Will be 500,000SF - The new North Carolina facility will be nearly five times the size of the 109,000 square foot Newark, Calif. data center Apple bought in 2006 to support its growing infrastructure. Apple also operates a data center on its Cupertino, Calif. campus, and has used content delivery networks from Akamai (AKAM) and Limelight Networks (LLNW) to distribute content to its users around the globe.

The new Apple facility will be the company’s East Coast operations center. A document filed with the state indicates the data center will “take advantage of 3 hour time change on the East Coast to facilitate communications between European operations/sales and California for data transmission.”

(Comment from Finance Geek Blog) - With Apple having already announced their plans to build its new $1 billion data center in Maiden, North Carolina, folks I have spoken to inside Apple told me that once the new data center is completed, Apple plans to have a more active role in doing their own content delivery.

Data Center Knowledge - The Apple-Google Data Center Corridor -Google and Apple may be having their tensions at the boardroom level, as seen in this week’s news that Google CEO Eric Schmidt will resign as a director of Apple. But the two technology giants are aligned in another area: the merits of western North Carolina as a haven for massive Internet data centers.

Apple’s planned $1 billion data center in Maiden, North Carolina is just 25 miles from a huge Google data center complex in Lenoir. The proximity is not an accident, as the Google project in Caldwell County prompted economic development officials in nearby towns to begin pursuing data center development.

Data Center Knowledge - Apple Moving Quickly on NC Project - Apple is known for keeping its new technology secret prior to launch. So it’s not surprising that the company has had little to say about its $1 billion data center project in North Carolina. The new iData Center may not get the fanfare of a MacWorld keynote when it launches, but one thing is clear: Apple plans to move quickly to the construction phase.

“It’s my understanding that they want to have bulldozers on-site in mid-August,” said Scott Millar, execurtive director of the Catawba County Economic Development Corp. “They’re moving ahead rapidly with permitting and acquiring the land, with the intent of hitting the ground running.”

Data Center Knowledge - The iDataCenter and the Cloud - Some of our recent reporting on Apple’s $1 billion data center in North Carolina is being discussed around the web this week, prompted by an piece by Leander Kahney at The Cult of Mac that examines the likelihood that the new facility will power cloud computing applications. There’s additional discussion at Wired, Fast Company, Mac News Network and Apple Insider.

Cult of Mac - Interview: Apple’s Gigantic New Data Center Hints at Cloud Computing - One of the leading theories about the size of the NC project is that Apple is planning future cloud computing services that will require lots of data center storage. Cloud computing is a hot trend, and I’d be surprised if Apple isn’t thinking hard – and thinking differently – about cloud computing. Many cloud enthusiasts say that cloud computing will eliminate the need for data centers. In reality, the only thing will change is the owner of the building. All the applications and data that are moving into the cloud will live on servers in brick-and-mortar data centers. The companies that are building the biggest data centers tend to also have the biggest cloud ambitions


Cult of Mac - Apple Hires Top Green Hardware Expert For Data-Center Ops - Apple is getting serious about getting green. To make sure that its massive new data-center is energy efficient, Apple has just hired a top eBay executive and leading expert in the “greening” of cloud computing facilities.

Apple has picked up Olivier Sanche, eBay’s Senior Director Data Centers Services and Strategy, according to the Green Data Center Blog. Based in San Francisco, Sanche has helped make eBay’s massive global operations carbon neutral since 2007. Most recently, he helped oversee the construction of eBay’s newest data-center, which will meet the highest green standards when it goes online in 2010.

Wired - Apple’s New Data Center Likely to Focus on Cloud Computing - Cloud computing huh? We noticed Apple’s iWork app was pretty lacking with no real-time online collaboration tools. A data center devoted to cloud computing would certainly fill that hole. But there still has to be something even bigger going on here, and your guesses are as good as ours. Add them in the comments below.

Fast Company - Is Apple Shooting for the Cloud? - Hence you could draw one final conclusion, and take this as yet another hint that Apple's fabled iTablet is on the way. It kind of makes sense--the iTablet's probably not going to have the same raw computing power and local storage as a fully-fledged MacBook, so a cloud-based solution for iPhoto, Numbers and the like (and maybe even your iTunes library?) would make excellent sense. It's just a thought, of course.

Apple Insider - Expert speculates Apple's new data center to be for cloud computing - While Miller's cloud computing possibilities are speculation, as Apple has not announced its intent for the $1 billion server farm, it's also possible Apple is simply looking to bolster its current offerings. When MobileMe first launched in July of 2008, it was riddled with problems. As a result, Apple gave subscribers an extra 30 days of free service. MobileMe now comes with a 60-day free trial, while the cost for the service, with 20GB of online storage, is $99 per year.

Wikipedia - Cloud Computing - is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.

• It is service-based.
• It is scalable and elastic. I.e., it is able to add and remove infrastructure as needed.
• It uses shared infrastructure to build economies of scale.
• It is metered and users pay according to usage.
• Most importantly, of course, it uses Internet technologies.

Newsweek - Computing Heads for the Clouds - Supercomputers today are used mainly by the military, government intelligence agencies, universities and research labs, and large companies to tackle enormously complex calculations for such tasks as simulating nuclear explosions, predicting climate change, designing airplanes, and analyzing which proteins in the body are likely to bind with potential new drugs. Cloud computing aims to apply that kind of power—measured in the tens of trillions of computations per second—to problems like analyzing risk in financial portfolios, delivering personalized medical information, even powering immersive computer games, in a way that users can tap through the Web. It does that by networking large groups of servers that often use low-cost consumer PC technology, with specialized connections to spread data-processing chores across them. By contrast, the newest and most powerful desktop PCs process only about 3 billion computations a second.

The Hounds Layman Opinion - All of what these guys are saying is true. Yes, this will help to create flexibility and integration of computing. You will have a form of a Computer System at home. It will be like your Desktop today, but also full integrated with the controls of an Entertainment Center (TV, Stereo, Electronic Gaming), a Knowledge Center (Library, Spreadsheets, Word Processor, the Web), and a Home Management system (Electricity, Temperature Control, Lights, etc.) Then you will have your PDA (Iphone, Blackberry, or whatever comes next) that the Cloud (This network of Supercomputer servers) will allow you to keep in touch with your personal data at all times. In my opinion, the next Generation of PDAs will take the place of any need of a laptop.

The problems going forward in the near term are Disk Storage and Bandwidth. The Cloud helps to deal with those two issues. Remember the article I wrote a few weeks ago about the Exaflood entitled BROAD BAND!!! (There is a great video in that article)? Cloud Computing is the cheap and easy way to deal with these issues in the near term. On Demand High Definition Video is going to take up a lot of Bandwidth and Storage Space. Personal Hard Drive Capacity will continue to increase, but true High Definition Video will eat up a lot of space on those Hard Drives.

It will be easier and increase portability by having Movies and Audio parked on a remote server at a Data center, such as the one in Maiden. These facilities will also be needed to deal with the exponential World Wide wave of demand that is coming as more and more people gain accessibility to computers. As one can see there is a need for this Data Center and I believe the ancillary benefits to this area will be tremendous.