Lauren Ramsey

After postponing the development of one data center and losing a couple of high-level managers in its data center group, Microsoft said it will soon open new facilities in Dublin, Ireland, and Chicago.

The data centers will support Microsoft services such as its new search offering, Bing, and Azure, its cloud computing platform.

The Dublin facility, to open on Wednesday, will be the largest for Microsoft outside of the U.S. It covers 303,000 square feet and uses outside air to cool the facility, for power consumption savings.

The Chicago facility, scheduled to open July 20, will be more than twice as large, covering 700,000 square feet. Two-thirds of the center will be able to accommodate servers in containers. In some data centers, Microsoft has started using standard shipping containers loaded with 1,800 to 2,500 servers, because it can save on electricity by cooling just the containers rather than the whole facility.

The openings come after Microsoft announced earlier this year that it would put a planned Iowa data center on hold. It also delayed the openings of the Chicago and Dublin facilities.

At the time, the company optimistically described the Iowa postponement as a result of successful efforts to improve efficiency of data center operations elsewhere.

But in fact Microsoft may have put off construction after discovering that growth in hosted services has been lower than it may have expected. Revenue in Microsoft's online services group during the quarter ending March 31 dropped to $721 million from $843 million in the same quarter last year.

Microsoft is not alone in reining back its data-center expansion plans during the recession. Google late last year decided to delay building a facility it planned in Oklahoma.

Microsoft has also lost a couple of well-known leaders in its data center group. In April, Michael Manos, the general manager of the data center services division, left to take a job at wholesale data-center provider Digital Realty Trust. Late last year, James Hamilton, another respected data center engineer, left Microsoft to join Amazon Web Services.

IBM pushed further into the market for railroad management systems as it opened a base in Beijing for work on train maintenance and surveillance products.

Products displayed at the event included applications that monitor aging train parts and set off alerts when they need repair, or that reduce traffic jams by tracking the positions and delays of all trains on a network.

The Beijing center will lead further development on those products and others, in cooperation with IBM bases in Dallas and La Gaude, France, a company representative said.

Other products the center will help carry forward include a surveillance system that can track multiple people on a camera screen and ring an alarm when it spots suspicious behavior, such as someone setting a bag down and walking away. Another product controls ticket sales according to how many seats in each class are open at each point along a route.

The system that monitors train parts like engines and brakes is now being expanded to cover the train tracks, which will let it log how fast trains are traveling in addition to watching for equipment problems, the IBM representative said.

China's extensive railroad system and growth plans made it the natural place for the new operation, said Keith Dierkx, director of the IBM center.

China aims to have more high-speed rail than the rest of the world combined within five years, he said.

The center will tailor products for the huge Chinese market, which IBM has tapped before. IBM worked with China's railway ministry to deploy train monitoring and service stations across 2,000 Chinese cities starting over 10 years ago.

Products developed at the center will also be marketed abroad, Dierkx said.

Dierkx declined to say how many staff would work at the center, but said it would integrate work by "hundreds, if not thousands" of people worldwide.

The price for Data Domain is going up fast, as NetApp Wednesday morning tried to outspend EMC by offering US$1.9 billion to purchase the storage company.

This could be the start of a contentious battle involving rivals EMC and NetApp, which have both publicly announced their interest in purchasing Data Domain and its de-duplication and backup technology.

On May 20, NetApp announced a $1.5 billion definitive agreement to purchase Data Domain, saying one of the goals of the acquisition was to provide backup for systems made by competitors such as EMC and HP.

EMC fired back on Monday this week with a $1.8 billion offer, saying that ownership of Data Domain could give EMC more than $1 billion in revenue next year from the sizable de-duplication market.

"We didn't just wake up one day and say maybe this is a good thing to do. We've had our eye on Data Domain and obviously somebody moved before we did," EMC CEO Joe Tucci said. "Even in stand-alone mode, you're seeing projection of this company doing $480 million in revenue next year. We think we can grow it faster."

NetApp did not back off, instead raising its offer Wednesday to $30 per share, or $1.9 billion.

"Our strategic rationale remains the same and we firmly believe that the combination of our two companies will provide a greater opportunity and risk-adjusted value for Data Domain shareholders, customers, and partners," NetApp Chairman and CEO Dan Warmenhoven said in an announcement. "The complementary nature of the Data Domain and NetApp product lines will result in higher aggregate growth compared to the redundancies that would result with the EMC product line."

NetApp claimed its offer is "superior" to EMC's because it offers an "opportunity for Data Domain shareholders to participate in the future success of the combined NetApp and Data Domain entity."