A data center is being built by Microsoft in West Des Moines Iowa for $1.1 billion. Projects like this are spread throughout the country and provide temporary jobs for construction, build up the surrounding area, and permanent jobs to staff the data center once it’s completed.
In order to solidify and build up the infrastructure around West Des Moines is investing $87 million on the 800-1,000 acres surrounding the data center. Infrastructure construction such as repairing local roads and expanding areas of development are generally viewed as positives to areas that receive data centers.
The project in West Des Moines could be one of the largest of its kind according to the Economic Development Director of West Des Moines “This is the first type of project like this that Microsoft has ever done. It’s probably one of the largest data centers that anybody has ever done in the country.” KCCI’s report also points out that the project will result in 84 full time jobs.
The project continues to grow Microsoft’s cloud storage footprint in the bread basket of the United States. We previously reported $200 million renovations to a data center in Wyoming that originally cost $500 million. Cloud storage is one of Microsoft’s most important assets because as their cloud services grow they have to meet the personal and enterprise demand for a growing customer base. Investments like this are large but are necessary to continue to provide cloud storage and computing.
Further reading: Cloud, Data centers, Microsoft
