Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Hardware, Odds and ends, Xserve, Apple
Apple building server farm, secret lair in North Carolina
As Mike mentioned in the news roundup yesterday, word is going around that the corporate overlords at Apple are planning to build a massive server farm in the state of North Carolina within the next decade or so. How do we know? Because the company is working on getting a few nice tax breaks to go along with the deal, eventually worth about $46 million if Apple fulfills their end of the agreement. Their end of the agreement being a huge investment of a whopping $1 billion (that's over 333,000 Xserves, if that is indeed what they're installing -- and we bet not) into an economy that could probably use it. What exactly will go in there? We aren't sure -- lawmakers say the investment is worth it, and obviously Apple isn't showing their cards.[Note: the $1B investment figure is not an upfront number, but rather a total investment over the first 9 years of operation. –Ed.]
But the facility, once up and running, will start by employing at least 100 people, so that's a nice start. Google has apparently gone through the same deal with North Carolina recently, though their deal was a little smaller: $600 million investment for a server farm that opened last year.
More backend for Mobile Me? More power for the App Store or a project like it? A giant building full of Cubes running 24 hours a day? Or something we haven't even dreamt of yet?
Before the iPod and the iPhone, there was iFiction-- err, 
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
