What do clouds look like from the ground?

We use the cloud constantly in our daily lives, but we often don’t notice it. But what exactly does the cloud, where data is stored and processed, look like? Why and where new data centers are built. And what bottlenecks exist in cloud economics.

The plan started this year, but it has not yet been fully realized. The three new data centers of the American giant will take another year to a year and a half to be ready. Microsoft In operation in the area around Vienna. The project, which cost around 1 billion euros, was implemented in Austria for several reasons, according to Microsoft Austria boss Hermann Erlach: there is plenty of green energy, a secure electricity supply, political stability and few earthquakes, for example. But data centers are not just springing up in Austria. There will be around 11,000 of them worldwide by December 2023. The trend is rising sharply. Because the demand for computing power is getting bigger. And growing. “The challenge is to build up enough data center capacity quickly enough to meet the growing demand,” said Ben Maynard in an interview with “Presse am Sonntag”. The Briton was speaking on behalf of the European Association of Cloud Service Providers CISPE. In other words, an industry that relies on the computing power available for cloud services is also growing.

Cloud stands for cloud. Clouds that are close to the ground are called fog in everyday language. In technical terms, cloud refers to a network of remote servers that can be accessed from any location at any time through a secure internet connection. Cloud is by no means a cloud on the ground, but a network of fiber optic cables that connect small to large data centers to each other. But for many people, it is not clear how the cloud economy actually works. Because it is not only giants like Microsoft that build and operate data centers. There are many smaller players in the market. And there are unknown giants.