Microsoft Moving Deeper into Data Centers

LAS VEGAS — There are two large IT conferences going on this week in this City of Constant Visitation, held under tranquil blue Nevada skies. Both are international, but they’re very different: One is huge, well-established, and fancy-schmancy; the other is younger, smaller, not nearly as fancy, but among the fastest-growing conferences of its kind in the world.

The Station is situated at AFCOM’s Data Center World, and three colleagues — the always personable Michael Hickins, Eric Lundquist, and Wayne Rash — are teaming to cover the CTIA wireless gadget show. AFCOM — an acronym, long since forgotten, that stands for a consortium of data center-oriented companies and IT managers — is the plainer, but no less trendy, IT conference.

Microsoft, not immediately connected to data center world in most people’s minds, made the most news Tuesday at AFCOM when its own supervisor of data centers revealed that the world’s largest software-making company is also building cutting-edge centers of its own. See the eWEEK story on Microsoft’s “containerized” approach.

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