November 7, 2007
<!-- Article By Line -->BY HOWARD WOLINSKY Staff Reporter
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Remember when Sears Tower lost its claim 10 years ago to being the world’s biggest building? Or when Chicago was eclipsed as the Second City by Los Angeles?

Well, we’re back, baby.

Chicago has bragging rights again for something big — really big, for the new e-economy, not for a conventional, old-economy building like Sears Tower or the John Hancock Center.



Microsoft, the software and Internet giant from Redmond, Wash., said today that it is building a “mega data center” in west suburban Northlake. Based on the description from Microsoft and Ascent Corp., the St. Louis data center builder, the facility would be the largest, most powerful commercial data center in the world.

It’s scheduled to go on line in June. Steel infrastructure starts going in next week.

The $500 million two-story facility is being constructed on a 14-acre site along I-294 between North and Grand in Northlake. Ascent said the site once housed a Kraft bakery and warehouses.

Native South Sider Mike Manos, senior director of data center services for Microsoft, described the building as “a modern-day bit factory” that will handle Microsoft’s growing number of online services, including Internet mail and messaging, product updates and product downloads.

He said the center, which will house tens of thousands of computers, is the largest mega data center in Microsoft’s fleet, which includes mega centers in Quncy, Wash. and San Antonio, Texas, and one to be built in Dublin, Ireland. He said the center will serve 500 million “unique users” per month from around the world.

Phil Horstmann, chief executive and founder of Ascent, said the Northlake center is the biggest of the hundreds of centers it has built since 1998. He said the older and less powerful data centers may be physically larger, but factoring in the site size, power usage, connectivity and other factors, the Northlake data center could well be “the largest, most powerful” data center in the world.

The center will have its own power substation. Manos said the facility will innovate new ways of using power efficiently, such as taking advantage of the cold climate to efficiently cool down racks and racks of hot computers.

The Microsoft data center will be a lonely town. Manos said the center will be staffed with only 35 to 50 employees, “mostly high-paying IT jobs.” Horstmann said the site originally was conceived as a multi-tenant center until Microsoft decided to become the only tenant. For more on the Northlake center, go to www.northlakedatacenter.com.

The center will have its own power substation. Manos said the facility will innovate new ways of using power efficiently, such as taking advantage of the cold climate to efficiently cool down racks and racks of hot computers.