Grant County, Quincy top Microsoft's global search
Grant County, Quincy top Microsoft's global search
Windows Live director addresses GCEDC quarterly meeting
MOSES LAKE — When Microsoft considered a location for its data storage centers, it looked all over the planet.
Thirty-one different criteria were considered in each location, with the company mapping out the entire world, including power capacity, power pricing, the local community and the presence of a fiber optic network.
"Isn't it interesting that the number one place that we found, the very first significant investment on a global scale, is Grant County?" Michael Manos, senior director of data center services for Microsoft's Windows Live Operations, asked a full audience during his presentation at the county's economic development council quarterly membership meeting Thursday afternoon.
The county was competing against every location in the United States and across the world, Manos said, and was the number one location for the company.
"Grant County has done things right," he said, pointing to the mission to diversify the business base, the investments in fiber optics and investments in damming infrastructure which took place 50 years ago. "There was forethought in the leadership here in the county, over the years, to try and drive the area, and now I think what you're starting to see is the alignment."
The company is investing in the county by partnering with the county and the city of Quincy, and fostering that relationship, Manos said, stressing the importance of becoming a part of the community.
"We're betting on Grant County," he said.
Manos explained that he runs data center infrastructure for Microsoft across the globe, be it building facilities or operating them.
Windows Live is a year-old movement in which the Microsoft company began looking at their customers and how they were using the products.
"One of the fundamental changes that began happening about a year ago and is really quickly picking up speed is the idea of services," Manos explained. "Getting specific functionality, things that you need to do in your day-to-day, everyday life, getting those from the Internet."
More and more people are using online services, Manos said, with more companies investing in and developing such services. He compared the services to a person being able to copy something to the Internet, which only that person can access, and then driving 400 miles to visit people, and being able to look at all the same files and share them anywhere in the world.
"That day is not that far away," he said. "Companies like ourselves, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, we're building platforms to be able to meet that demand. The demand is there. We have millions and millions of users using our services today … There's no doubt that that's where the market is going to."
In order to reach that point, Manos explained, the files have to be stored somewhere. It wouldn't be on a person's computer, but there have to be computers somewhere running things. Windows Live is what Manos called Microsoft's "paradigm shift," moving from a traditional software company to part of an online world where people can access those services.
Data centers are the place where those services are maintained and kept online.
"In the online space, it's people, it's operations that drive that consistency of service," Manos said. By moving toward the new paradigm shift of offering such service, he added, operation has become immensely important, because the services need to work when customers access them.
"A lot more pressure is being put on my organization and our competitors that say, 'You better be really good, and you can never ever, ever, ever be down. Ever,'" he said. "It's so important for Microsoft that we've begun to align our entire company behind this effort."
The organization was restructured so that Microsoft Network, or MSN, branded products and significant portions of the business like Hotmail and MSN Messenger were placed under Windows Live and tied to the online mission, to ensure the company is positioned to take a leadership role in the midst of a battle for Internet space.
The data center that will locate in Quincy will be Microsoft's largest on the planet. The company has centers domestically and worldwide, but is building the latest generation, Manos said, utilizing the latest technologies and taking everything it has learned in building them.
Manos said the first data storage center facility, already under construction, will be completed this December, a year after the company's first look at the land purchased from the Port of Quincy, and operational by February. The two-month wait is due to the "unbelievable" complexity of the building's inner works.
"If you think about the total investment of the building, 90 percent of the cost is in the guts of the building," he said. "It's not the shell, it's not the steel, it's not the concrete — it's all the electrical and mechanical guts that go into the buildings that drive a lot of the cost. In order to have a system that's that complex, that's that intertwined … it takes us about two months to make sure that those facilities are working correctly."
The center will employ 50 to 100 people per building, with the possibility of a total of three ultimately being located on the site, as well as "an entire ecosystem of people that support," Manos added, that will probably build up around the center.
Prior to Manos' presentation, GCEDC executive director Terry Brewer provided his quarterly director's report on projects the council has been working on.
Brewer cited the council's long-lasting work to bring an ethanol plant to the area, and said a sale closed on 100 acres of land to house Moses Lake Ethanol at the Central Terminals site on Wheeler Road. The company is moving forward on final engineering and design work, he added, and more will be announced in the near future from the corporation.
Guardian Insulation locating in Moses Lake is very close to being finalized and working with the state's Department of Ecology on an air quality permit, Brewer continued.
"Their full intention is to build a plant here and expand it within three years, double the size of the plant," he said. "So now they're thinking they might want to go for the full volume permit now."
Brewer noted the council's excitement over REC Silicon's decision to locate a $600 million expansion in Moses Lake, and singled out the entities responsible for assisting in that process. He added that things are looking positive for Washington Biodiesel, which announced its location in Warden in March.
In addition, Yahoo! will break ground on its own data storage center in Quincy Aug. 2, Brewer said, with more news coming later.
The council continues to receive other calls from companies interested in the county that are working on other data center projects or related to data centers, Brewer said.
"Very busy, a lot of good things going on," Brewer said. "We're going to turn this county on its head pretty soon, I think, for people that are available to work in the construction industry, because there are big projects that are coming here in the near term."
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