Apple's NC Data Center Plot Larger Than Originally Thought

Wednesday October 27, 2010 6:52 am PDT by Eric Slivka

Ongoing investigations over at All Things Digital have revealed that Apple's new data center that is set to open "any day now" in Maiden, North Carolina may be the site of even grander plans than the potential doubling in size discovered late last week. According to that earlier research, Apple's initial proposal to representatives of Catawba County where the project is located included a schematic showing two adjacent data centers that would appear to total on the order of one million square feet, with only one of those buildings having been constructed so far.

Apple's 70-acre parcel across Startown Road from existing data center

New research from All Things Digital indicates, however, that Apple's plans may even extend beyond that planned one million square-foot facility on 183 acres, as the company also owns 70 acres across the street from that site.

The scuttlebutt around Maiden is that the company intends to use it for office space. But that seems unlikely.

A more plausible explanation is that this parcel, too, will be used for data center space.

Apple has yet to confirm its plans for the functionality of the new data center, although speculation has centered on a major push into cloud-based storage that would allow users to stream their media libraries to a broad array of Internet-connected devices.

Apple's initial phase of 500,000 square feet will already rank among the largest single-building data centers dedicated to a single company, and a doubling (or even more) of that would rival the largest data center campuses in use today.

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