What Kind of Data Center Can You Build With $500M?

coondoggie writes "So, if the government gave your company $500 million to spend on building a new data center what would you buy and how would you build it? Well, the Social Security Administration is about to find out. As part of the stimulus bill, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the SSA got the tidy little sum to replace its National Computer Center. The SSA in fact says it will need closer to $800 million to fund a new IT infrastructure, including the new data center — the physical building, power and cooling infrastructure, IT hardware, and systems applications. (This is addition to a $72 million backup facility currently under construction in Durham, North Carolina)."

Comments

Ask Google

[mcwop]

I bet they could do it for less, and on schedule.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/02/googles-data-center-secrets-revealed/

Re:How about a location first

[JoeMerchant]

Your location also needs some competent staffing....

Re:The Unfortunate Reality of Maintaining Legacy

[jcr]

COBOL's a hell of a lot simpler than C++ or Java, and training people to read it well enough to rewrite legacy apps in a modern language just isn't that hard.

-jcr