Apple building new, smaller data center in Maiden
Site plans gives details of construction, more potential growth — MAIDEN, NC — In addition to the world's largest private fuel cell installation and solar farm, Apple Inc. is building a new, smaller data center on its Maiden campus.
Context & Ripple Effects
Maiden has been Apple's infrastructure bet since the company quietly bought land there — the deal that cost a Carolina couple $1.7 million and a Jacuzzi in 2010 — and by early 2011 the giant building was confirmed as the backend for iTunes and MobileMe services, large enough to be visible from space by mid-2011. Site plans filed this week show a second, smaller data center rising on the same campus, alongside what is already billed as the world's largest private fuel cell installation and an on-site solar farm.
The pickup was broad — CNET, Engadget, AllThingsD, GigaOM, The Register, Data Center Knowledge and others all ran the item — which reflects how closely the industry watches Apple's owned-facility strategy while rivals like Apple's own Oregon evaluation from late 2011 show the company still shopping additional regions.
First-order effects
- Apple adds incremental compute capacity at Maiden without acquiring new land or grid interconnects, extending a campus whose fuel cell and solar installations already anchor its power profile.
- Catawba County gains another round of construction activity and an expanded tax base on property Apple bought for roughly $1.7 million in 2010.
Second-order effects
- The on-site generation buildout pressures Duke Energy and other utilities serving hyperscale customers to accommodate behind-the-meter renewables rather than resist them.
- Competing cloud operators face a visible benchmark for green-powered owned campuses, raising the bar for their own siting and energy announcements.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, hyperscalers will keep buying oversized parcels with power headroom — treating each campus as a staged option for future buildings rather than a single facility decision.
- Owned, renewably powered capacity becomes a competitive differentiator in consumer cloud services, where iTunes- and MobileMe-scale backends are the product.
The trend: Consumer-cloud growth is pushing Apple to expand owned, self-powered data center campuses in stages rather than lease wholesale capacity.