Dell has joined the data center party in Quincy, Washington.
Quincy is home to data centers run by Microsoft, Yahoo, and Intuit, and this week, Dell announced that it too has opened a facility in the tiny town on the Columbia river. Dams along the Columbia river, you see, provide relatively inexpensive hydropower for these massive computing facilities. But perhaps more importantly, the state of Washington has provided tax breaks for tech giants building data centers in the region.
Dell sells computers and servers and networking gear, but in recent years, it has evolved into something more. It's a services company that helps set up, run and even host infrastructure for the world's businesses, and it's a cloud computing company that offers access to virtual computing resources over the net. All that requires data centers.
The Dell Western Technology Center in Quincy is one of a handful of data centers Dell is planning to build around the world to jump into the market. Last year, the company said it would spend over a billion dollars to extend its "data center, mobile, and cloud environments," erecting facilities in 10 different countries.
"By providing customers the technology they need — without up-front costs and complex maintenance — we can take a tremendous burden off their IT staff, enabling them to innovate and deliver high-value services that drive real business results,” read a statement from Kevin Jones, vice president of Dell Services.
Dell's IT Outsourcing services will include like disaster recovery, data center management, platform management, security, and help with hybrid cloud environments (where resources span both private resources and resources on public cloud services).
In recent years, led by companies such as Google and Microsoft, the world's tech giants have worked to build data centers that use less energy and put less of a strain on the environment. And Dell says it's part of the trend. According to the company, the new data center center including the largest installation of energy-efficient thermal wheel technology -- a device that captures and recycles heat exhaust -- in the U.S., and it's tapping that hydropower, which is kinder to the environment.
Dell, Microsoft and Yahoo did not respond to requests for comment.
