Microsoft Dumping $700m Into Iowa 'Cloud' Data Center

Cloud processing! It's the future! Or so we're told in the most ambiguous ways possible. The 'Cloud' has been a media buzzword for awhile now, but it's only since talk of the Xbox One has really started going that Microsoft has done everything but print it on a giant flag and carry it toward the front lines of the console war.

To that end, it has been reported that Microsoft has recently invested $700 million dollars into expanding its West Des Moines, Iowa data center, pushing the overall investment to nearly a billion dollars. What was that about video game development being too expensive? The data center will support Xbox Live and Microsofts Office 365 software. In addition, Microsoft’s Christian Belady stated,”The expansion supports the growing demand for Microsoft’s cloud services.”

The issue, of course, is that no one really knows exactly what that means. Microsoft has not exactly been detail forthcoming when telling us exactly how the cloud would be used, and as Bob Webb described on last nights Cocktail Time LIVE, the term “cloud” has been horrible misused and misconstrued. While the cloud could be used to spin up things like multiplayer servers, how would latency effect things like AI processing which has been mentioned could be offloaded onto the cloud as well? Microsoft has stated that the cloud would allow for more “living worlds” but has declined to say exactly how that would be done.

Personally, I don't think Microsoft even knows the details themselves. They know they have this tech, and they know they can do something with it, but everything else seems like grandiose bluster at this point. I'm still waiting to see how any of this will come together.