Steve Ballmer: Microsoft Has 1 Million Servers in their Datacenters, Only Second to Google

During Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, everybody was of course paying attention to the big reorganization that is taking place right as we speak inside Microsoft. And of course, when Steve Ballmer is communicating something, either in written or spoken form, you have to extend your antennae as much as possible and catch as much info as you get. That’s especially valuable when you are a journalist, and when you write about Microsoft, of course (cough, cough…).

How many datacenters and servers inside a certain company has, Microsoft or Google, is definitely some delightful and interesting information that geeks or people from the industry might talk about at a beer, or a cup of coffee.

“Hey, did you know that Google has the most datacenter servers in the world? They have more than 1 million! And Microsoft is number two, now! “. During one of his talks at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference, Ballmer has informed us that Microsoft now has more than one million servers in their datacenters, thus making it number 2, secondy only to Google.

With 1 million+ servers in datacenters, Microsoft focuses on cloud

The cloud infrastructure, both public and private, is definitely one of the “trendy” and rapidly evolving sections of Microsoft’s business. That’s why it’s taking a core role in the company’s recent reorganization plans. And Microsoft has so many products, that this number should come as no surprise.

We have something over a million servers in our datacenter infrastructure

said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, 2 days ago, during Monday’s WPC keynote. He went on by saying

Google is bigger than we are. Amazon is a little bit smaller. You get Yahoo and Facebook, and then everybody else is 100,000 units probably or less. The number of companies that are at the same time seriously investing in the private cloud, which is not going away, and in these hybrid clouds is really just one and that’s us

Of course, this ranking is only according to Ballmer’s own data and maybe somebody out there, like Akamai, for example, might say that the are more companies that make it in the “over 100,000 server” club. Google is all about the online business, that’s well known. But Microsoft has all the chances of getting even closer to Google’s huge number of datacenter servers (an official figure isn’t yet available) once their cloud operations extend even further.

Besisdes Office 365, Microsoft Azure public cloud platform, Microsoft also has partnerships with hardware OEMs in order to deliver hybrid cloud technologies. Ballmer’s focus on the cloud and online business is obvious. We know that the Redmond company has recently announced that they are planning a $677 million datacenter expansion in west Des Moines Iowa.

During the Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft has also intensively spoken about the cloud and its business enhancement with its partners. Also, as a side fact, the word “datacenter” has been mentioned four times in Ballmer’s memo while “supply chain” only 3 times. Microsoft – a services and devices company, alright.

source: ZDNet