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Sears Is Turning Shuttered Stores Into Data Centers
miller60 writes "Servers may soon fill the aisles where shoppers once roamed. Sears Holdings is seeking to convert former Sears and Kmart stores into Internet data hubs. Some stand-alone stores and distribution centers may be repurposed as data centers, while mall-based stores can be converted into disaster recovery sites, the company says, offering access to stores and eateries for displaced workers who may be on site for weeks. Then there's the wireless tower opportunity. Seventy percent of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Sears or Kmart store, and these rooftops can be leased to fill gaps in cell coverage. It's not the first effort to convert stores into IT infrastructure, as Rackspace is headquartered in an old mall, and companies have built data centers in malls in Indiana and Maryland. But Sears, which operates 25 million square feet of real estate, hopes to make this strategy work at scale." Also at Slash DataCenter.
Your data back.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
New HDD in Isle 6, New HDD in Isle 6!
I don't understand why place data centers in urban mall environments where property value is supposedly higher?
The summary actually says they are considering this for standalone stores and distribution centers.
recycling, good to see that these structures will serve a purpose beside being shopping stores! :)
there is a blue light special on red light web sits to day.
red light as in web sites that have slowed down to a stop.
If one of your "anchor" stores is Sears you're already in trouble...
Karma: Bad
Dunno. You might be able to get them to do it.
Don't listen to the Analysts. You guys are every bit as good as Amazon. But what's the one thing Amazon's got that you ain't got? DATACENTERS!"
The whole thing seems like an April Fool's joke, until you realize that these are the people who thought that buying K-Mart was a good idea.
You have that backward, K-Mart was the one who bought Sears (though it is more casually described as a merger). Sears was near bankruptcy and K-mart had the upper hand. Yes, it was a messed up world back then.
They also have so much corporate experience in the data center industry. Why don't they just open a hospital while they are at it?
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
That would be poetic... justice.
This type of [large percentage] of people are within [range] of a [ubiquitous thing] could be said for a lot of things when you figure how population is distributed. You know how AT&T can claim they cover 90-some% of the population? They aren't lying, but that doesn't mean that huge chunks of land aren't dead to them, including plenty of places you drive on the way between places.
Go ask google maps to show you all the sears locations in some major metropolitan area. Now take the measure tool and swing 10 miles out in a circle... covers more than you'd think.
Lets take Minnesota, because it's close to me. The Minneapolis metro is only 30-some miles corner to corner along the interstates and I guarantee that there's a sears or kmart on each corner suburb and one in the middle someplace. Put one of either type in the top 10 non-twin cities towns and blammo, 90%.
----- - The beatings will continue until morale improves
No. They're called anchor stores because they sell anchors and other nautical equipment. Geesh. Did you even read the article?
Sears Holdings isn't a retail company, or an IT company, or a realistate company, they are a hedge fund trying to squeeze out all the possible paper value from their assets. So that they can eventually convince some other sucker to buy these assets.
This is a continuation of some rather silly decisions that they've been making for some time.
in a mall part of the rent is paying the mall a percentage of your revenue for that store. data centers have no revenue like a retail store
Craftsman is no longer a Sears exclusive. Can't guarantee this is the case in all areas, but my local Ace Hardware carries Craftsman.
Redundancy is good And also good.
For some reason, every time they want to put up a new store, they build new. Meanwhile, when the old stores get closed they just sit and the building never gets used. It's almost like ringworm, you get this ever expanding ring of dead stores that expands out for the city center. Every day I drive by 3 abandon grocery stores and even worse, new construction for 2 new stores of about the same size!
Its good to hear they are doing something with at least some of them.
I've heard the terms used in ways that implied that a primary datacenter always had your data, but a DR datacenter just had hardware and the ability to load the data when needed, for downtime of days while loading data rather than weeks while setting up new hardware, while still being cheaper than a redundant primary.
Our DR facility has less hardware than the primary facility (just enough to keep critical services running), but everything is powered on 24x7 and data is replicated and up to date. Unless hardware is powered on and monitored, you have no assurance that it will actually power up when you need it.
My CEO would laugh in my face (and probably have security escort me out the door) if I said "Thanks for purchasing nearly an entire set of redundant equipment. So now if we have a disaster here, someone will need to swim through the flood waters and load up the trunk of their car with our backup tapes and drive half way across the country to turn on the servers at the secondary faciity and load up the data. We "think" it'll only take a few days to do that.... assuming everything powers up".
We do regular failover testing to make sure that the secondary facility really can handle our systems.
Are there really companies out there that have the foresight to plan for and spend money on a disaster recovery facility, but are ok with days of downtime while they try to bring it online?
Retailers have been doing this kind of thing for many, many years. The first indoor big box shopping mall every built (Southdale) was built just to have a place to attach a Dayton's store too. I got my start in IT in operations for a large retailer, working with the real estate team in setting up and closing down store properties was part of my job. Many retailers have as much business in real estate as they do in retail and this has been the case for years.
By way of point Home Depots are often located near Target or Walmart since they buy large tracts of land for their stores and as a defensive measure to keep the other companies store from being put up nearby. They then use the best space for their own and develop strip malls around their property. When they have a lot just the right size for a big box retailer they will lease it to someone like Home Depot just to keep the land from being used by the competitors as many cities have will build taxes for unused property.
McDonalds has been known to buy a large tract of land and build a strip mall just to ensure that they get a restaurant in a prime location. When stores closed down the realtors then find other uses for the store. This is something that the retailers have been doing for decades with professionally run and managed real estate companies that they own. There are even special tax exemptions to allow these operations with special discounts.
When Icahn wanted to do a hostile takeover on Target a year or two back his highest priority to get in - sell their property off for great profit - and get out. The only thing that is new about this case is that Sears wants to get into the data center hosting business. If they bring in professionals (which the article says is exactly what they are doing) to run it there is no reason that you couldn't see Sears do very well in a very short time doing this.
A K-mart store in my area stood empty for 6 years. The parking lot had weeds growing up, there was graffiti on the walls, and nearby small businesses were of the low-revenue, low traffic type with a lot of retail vacancies. This was for a store that was in a relatively affluent area with a lot of traffic going by every day. The problem was that the ownership of the store property was tied up in legal issues and no one could do anything with it. Maybe it was Sears or K-mart pre-bankruptcy or someone else. Anyway, finally, finally, the legal problems got resolved and the store was gutted and redeveloped into an LA Fitness and a Walmart food store. That was two years ago. Now, the whole block is thriving, parking is hard to find, and a nearby corner gas station was torn down to make way for construction of another retail block. The point is that sometimes the reason that the store property is no longer in a 'prime retail location' is because of the property owner. The same thing happens in residential neighborhoods when someone moves in and parks a lot of old cars around the house, lets rusting trash pile up, stops mowing the grass, and does not repaint when the paint is peeling.
When Amazon buys sears not for their retail system but for their IT infrastructure....
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Well, you're not going to put datacenters in run-down sections of Detroit, or any other crime-ridden city. But how about all those semi-rural communities scattered across America with defunct (or underperforming) K-Mart stores? Especially if they're in regions with cheaper electrical power...
Sounds rational to me.
We could no longer afford to shop at sears.