Cloud giant
Microsoft Corp (Microsoft) is testing an underwater data center off the coast of Scotland in the United Kingdom. Microsoft, which has headquarters in Redmond, Washington, United States, was traditionally recognized as a software giant, but under the leadership of Satya Nadella and his ‘cloud-first, mobile-first’ philosophy, the company now competes with companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) by offering Office 365 and the Azure public cloud platform. Its underwater center is located at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland.
Microsoft’s facility is part of ‘Project Natick’ - a project geared towards developing self-sufficient underwater facilities. Aside from being underwater, Microsoft’s latest facility is powered by renewable energy supplied in part by wave and tidal technologies. It uses undersea water to reduce cooling requirements.
The center is a prototype and currently only the size of a container. Installed on June 1, 2018 by Green Marine, a Scottish marine contractor, it has a 450-kW capacity. The data center could remain at its current location for up to five years but will definitely be there for at least a year.
“I am delighted that Microsoft and Naval Group have chosen Scotland as the location for this globally significant project,” explained Paul Wheelhouse, the Scottish Government’s Minister for Business, Innovation and Energy in a press release on the EMEC website. ““With our supportive policy environment, skilled supply chain, and our renewable energy resources and expertise, Scotland is the ideal place to invest in projects such as this and the project is yet another example of how the internationally recognized European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney is helping to attract valuable inward investment”. Ben Cutler, Project Natick Manager at Microsoft Research, Microsoft added, “Deploying at EMEC in the Orkney Islands, on a grid powered from locally-sourced renewable energy, matches our aspirations as a project and our commitment as a company to environmental sustainability.”
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