Apple's massive North Carolina data center

I guess this not a secret anymore that Apple will soon launch its own iTunes streaming service and the Steve Jobs is just waiting for the right moment to unveil its latest offerings to the media and the general public. Well in the recent Apple’s share holder meeting (which I missed due to some prior commitments) that took place on 23rd Feb 2011, Apple told the share holders about bringing its massive data center online.

The gargantuan data center located in Maiden, North Carolina is one of its kind. The data center which is 500,000 sq feet is around 5 times the size of the Apple’s current data center in Newark, California. According to the media and the speculations this data center will be used for iTunes streaming in the cloud and the MobileMe services. It is just the matter of time when Apple decide to open this data center and bring it online. The total cost associated with the creation of this massive computing facility will be around $1 billion.

Whatever Apple does attracts the attention of the media and the market. Hope the data center comes online this spring as that might make the cloud competition more interesting than before. Amazon has introduced the cloud drive/player, Apple is all set with this data center to jump into the cloud. Time for Google to make a move and something is telling me that move is around the corner.