Last week Mike Manos posted a blog entry and video on Generation 4 datacenters from Microsoft. This short TechNet EDGE video with Christian Belady and David Gauthier goes in to some more detail on these revolutionary datacenters. They talk through some obvious questions like what happens when it snows if you have a datacenter without a roof (just one of the features of our Gen 4 DC’s).

At the same time the guys have started their own datacenter blog where the explain in detail the notion of Gen 4 going beyond modularisation through container to modularisation of electrical and mechanical systems. The image below explains their goals nicely

This type of step change has huge implications for cost in the region of 20-40% of capital investment and considerable amounts in operating expenses. It’s interesting to see us ramping up our approach as Google seems to be scaling theirs back.

One nugget in this video: a typical datacenter takes 12-18 months. This Gen 4 approach means 3-6 months to build a DC. Wow!