Although I prefer not to promote cloud computing as the only solution for farming data, but it looks like everyone is doing it.  Lately, Microsoft is vamping up its cloud computing effort by redesigning its data center’s units in a way that cost saving and portability and fast track are all possible.  Amazon and Google are already the major players in cloud computing, and Microsoft doesn’t want to play the catch up guy, but it’s preferable for Microsoft to test the new trend as early as possible with little cost as possible since cloud computing is still young.  In this way Microsoft won’t have to repeat its mistakes with its early search engines that failed to capture the intended audiences and has allowed Google to dominate the search market while we’re speaking and in the pasts.  By inventing a new way to hold data such as the non-traditional data centers and data units that Microsoft has proposed, Microsoft believes even if cloud computing fails to ride the waves of success such as search engine has done, the company could back out easily and knowing that the cost for a failed project has been carefully orchestrated.

Microsoft’s new data centers and data units could be up fast since everything is built beforehand and ship to the intended locations as if a household member is buying a car and get the whole package right away.  The data centers’ units could be placed on the roof of a building and outside of a building and within the building, because the units contain a cooling system that is specifically designed to be flexible.  Microsoft suggests that the new data centers and data units will cost less to be built and cost less to maintain and cost less in term of energy consumption.  Another obvious thing about the new data centers and data units that Microsoft proposes is that these new data centers and data units won’t look so pretty.  It looks more like a shack for servers with little space to spare; rectangular and square looking shacks will be placed neatly and closely together to form a whole data center.  Look cheaply as intended but these new data centers and units could perform on a par with the traditional data centers.

As soon as Microsoft can roll out its new data centers and data units, and when that time arrives, your Bing’s search results may come from one of those funny looking data centers.  But who care right?  As long we have our search results, we don’t really care how Microsoft goes about building a data center to hold its search data.  Additionally, cloud computing users probably do not care much for how Microsoft goes about to house the cloud computing data and to provide cloud computing technology.  Still, if you’re one of those curious minds who wants to know just about anything or else you won’t be satisfied, then check out this video where Microsoft shows off how its new data centers and data units would be built.  After the jump, you could check out the video where Microsoft envisions how its data centers and data units should be shipped.  Source.