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SPILLOVER EFFECTS

August 22, 2008

Supporters of subsidies like those used to lure Microsoft's server farm to West Des Moines like to talk about "spillover effects," where the money spills into the rest of the economy, for example though data center construction. Economically, of course, that's nonsense, unless you assume that the money given to Microsoft would otherwise just disappear. Now it looks as though the "spillover" will be even less than you might expect -- unless you own a shipping container company:

A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed that Microsoft plans to house the servers in shipping containers but declined to comment specifically on the size of the facility or the number of servers to be located there.

Shipping containers? What did you expect, cardboard boxes?

"We are still in the process of completing the design of the center. Once that is finalized, we will have an estimate for these questions," she wrote via e-mail.
However, Microsoft said its $500 million, 550,000-square-foot data center in Chicago will house up to 220 containers, each filled with as many as 2,000 servers, or 440,000 servers. The software maker said the server-filled containers are easier to transport, set up and maintain than servers on conventional racks, though not all observers agree.

So Microsoft will be assembling shipping containers full of servers, putting them on trains or trucks, and sending them here to be put together in a big steel barn like Lego bricks. The "spillover" Iowa will get will mostly be for the crane operator, unless there's a derailment somewhere in the state.

Flickr image by photohome uk.