Apple’s massive data center in North Carolina will come online early next year, Apple execs said during an analyst conference call on Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s on-schedule,” said Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer. “We expect it completed by the end of the calendar year.”
The $1 billion center is as big as the world’s biggest data facilities, and has been the subject of much speculation since construction started in August 2009. Occupying 500,000 square feet, the data center is about five times the size of Apple’s data center in Newark, California.
However, it may just represent extra capacity for Apple’s growing number of mobile devices. Apple has sold more than 100 million iOS devices, executives said on this afternoon’s analyst cal.
This is Oppenheimer’s story: “The facility will provide Apple with a major East Coast infrastructure hub to support its iTune music store and iPhone app store,” he said.
“The time-frame on construction seems about right,” said Rich Miller, founder and editor of Data Center Knowledge, an industry publication. “Data centers of this size typically take about a year to build, and they started in August. Typically there’s a couple of months of commissioning to test out all the equipment.”
However, whether Apple has more ambitious plans for the data center, Miller doesn’t know. It’s exceptional size would suggest more capabilities than just an East Coast hub.
“There’s a cone of silence on that,” said Miller. “We’ve been trying to keep an ear on the ground about that and Apple’s not saying much, and neither is anyone else working with them.”
Earlier this year, Apple hired Olivier Sanche from eBay, an expert in making massive data centers more energy efficient. Two or three months ago, Apple posted several job openings at the data center.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
18 responses to “Apple’s Massive NC Data Center Coming Online Next Year: Execs”
Drop in the bucket to the most liquid company in the world.
HCG drops