In a century-old farming town in central Washington state, Microsoft has built a farm for the Internet age.
But rather than corn or cows, this farm teems with computer servers and data storage systems that will serve as the backbone of Microsoft"s effort to combat escalating competition on the Web from Google and others.
Microsoft"s new data center in Quincy, Wash., is its largest "server farm" to date--big enough to house seven soccer fields--and a physical manifestation of the company"s giant ambitions to be a force in the world of Web services.
The world"s largest software maker will officially flip the switch on tens of thousands of computer servers at the Quincy facility on Monday and Microsoft is already at work on a massive $550 million data center in San Antonio, Texas.