Skybox Datacenters will partner with logistics real estate specialist Prologis Inc. to develop data centers in Chicago and other major U.S. markets. The first project will be a 30-megawatt, 189,000 square foot project in Elk Grove Village the leading data center hub in the Suburban Chicago market.
The announcement highlights the growing intersection of logistics and digital infrastructure, which are both more important than ever in supporting global business through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Logistics specialists like Prologis have extensive real estate holdings in proximity to population centers, which are also key data center destinations as cloud platforms and video services seek to bring content closer to eyeballs.
Microsoft is seeking better ways to manage powerful new AI hardware in its cloud computing operation, and focusing on immersion cooling technology used in bitcoin mining as the most promising technology for future high-density data centers.
The company is test-driving a setup in which servers are dunked in tanks of cooling fluid to manage rising heat densities. Citing the need to prepare for more powerful new chips and rising rack densities, the company is test-driving “promising” immersion technologies that are currently used in bitcoin mining operations.
“We’ve been investigating how we can achieve better cooling efficiency, and liquid cooling is what we’ve been focusing on,” said Mark Russinovich, the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft’s Azure Cloud, said in a presentation at Microsoft Ignite. “What we’ve locked on as likely where we’re headed in our data centers is two-phase liquid cooling, and we’ve made a ton of progress down this path.”
Digital Realty: Data Gravity Will Reshape the Interconnection Landscape
The Meet-Me-Room inside the Westin Building Exchange in Seattle. (Photo: Digital Realty)
Interconnection ties the Internet together, allowing data to flow across networks and to your home or office. The nature of these connections has been changing, and data center developer Digital Realty believes there is more change to come.
In the future, Digital Realty asserts, interconnection will move closer to giant storehouses of data, rather than being concentrated in network hubs in city centers.
The company outlined its vision for a more distributed interconnection landscape in a recent paper, arguing that the current system for network connections is inefficient. Digital Realty believes data center geography will be guided by massive aggregation points for data, which create “data gravity” that attracts applications, services and infrastructure. In a world defined by data gravity, there will soon be too much
SpaceX Gets Connected: Satellite Broadband Meets the Data Center
Satellite company Telesat is preparing to deploy its Lightspeed network of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites to provide broadband Internet from space. (Photo: Telesat)
Doug Mohney is the Editor in Chief of Space IT Bridge, which tracks the business of space-based satellites. He has been working in and writing about IT and satellite industries for over 20 years.
SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat and Amazon are all moving forward with plans to deliver low-latency high speed broadband across the globe, leveraging the advantages of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Both SpaceX and OneWeb are filling out their constellations of hundreds and thousands of spacecraft this year, while Telesat and Amazon plan to start launching their first satellites within two to three years.
For NTT Global Data Centers Americas, adding data centers one at a time is not enough. This week NTT Global opens for business in two new markets with launch events in Chicago and Hillsboro, Oregon. By the end of this year, the company plans to open additional new campuses in Santa Clara and Phoenix.
The building boom is the realization of a vision that has been percolating since 2013, when NTT acquired a majority stake in U.S. data center specialist RagingWire. The capital strength of NTT has allowed the company to build a data center platform spanning the major markets in the U.S.