Microsoft Reportedly to Open Data Center in Southern Taiwan

According to informed sources, Microsoft Corp. will decide by 2015 the feasibility of opening a mega data center in Taiwan to better serve its customers on the island.

The sources say Microsoft's plan is motivated by the fact that  Google's under-construction data center in Changhua, central Taiwan, will draw other competitors to follow suit, coupled with the world's top-five contract manufacturers of data servers being headquartered in Taiwan not to mention the island's safer and more convenient data storage environment than China's.

Microsoft will reportedly provide  customers with “infinite” storage  coupled with cloud service at the data center, said to be somewhere in southern Taiwan, without extra charge to lure B2B and B2C enterprise customers away from Google.

Industry executives say Microsoft urgently needs more data centers in Greater China for all its operating facilities in this region will run short of storage capacity by 2015 or 2016 due to  exponential increase in customers in the region.

Microsoft has reportedly approached Taiwan's leading data-server suppliers, including Wistron Corp., Inventec Corp., Quanta Computer Inc., Compal Electronics Inc., and Pegatron Corp., to supply some US$600 million in equipment for the  Taiwan center next year.

Industry executives say the data centers in Taiwan by Google and Microsoft underscore the importance of Taiwan's supply chain to global market for data centers. (KL)