“Apple filed a permit with Washoe County to build a new cluster of facilities adjacent to its original ‘Project Mills’ site that it is dubbing ‘Project Huckleberry,'” Jason Hidalgo reports for USA Today.
“Although previous activity at the site involved expanding on the original campus, permitting information indicates that Huckleberry involves the construction of a new data center,” Hidalgo reports. “Initial construction for the project will involve a new full shell, several data center clusters as well as a support building.”
“The permit application follows continued activity at the Reno Technology Park site just east of Reno-Sparks since the Apple data center deal was approved in 2012 — which included an $89 million tax abatement,” Hidalgo reports. “Prior to the filing for Project Huckleberry, the data facility was shaping up to have 14 buildings with a total size of 412,000 square feet, according to Trevor Lloyd, senior planner for Washoe County Planning and Development’s Community Services. Most recently, Apple submitted a permit for a new substation to support further development. The site is practically at capacity and will require more power to support new development, according to Lloyd.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple has the wherewithal to become a leader in cloud services. With recent database acquisitions and continued data center builds and expansions, Apple could really put some distance between their platforms and the others. Already, Continuity and Handoff make other platforms seem second-rate at best. Anyone who has a Mac, an iPhone, an iPad, and an Apple Watch is already so far ahead of the rest of the world that it’s getting to be ridiculous!
SEE ALSO:
Apple has quietly doubled its Reno data center site – March 31, 2015
Arizona House OKs tax credits and exemption for Apple data center – February 25, 2015
The secret life of Apple’s Arizona tax breaks – February 18, 2015
Arizona OKs tax break for Apple sapphire glass plant – November 20, 2013
Apple paid $6 billion in U.S. federal income taxes, 1/40th of all corporate income taxes collected by U.S. government in 2012 – January 5, 2013
Reno City Council unanimously approves 79% tax break for Apple data center – June 28, 2012
Apple confirms Reno, Nevada as the site of its next U.S. data center pending tax break deals – June 26, 2012
Travis County approves tax incentives for Apple’s Austin campus expansion – May 2, 2012
Apple gets 15-year property tax exemption for $250 million data center in Prineville, Oregon – April 20, 2012
Apple confirms plans for Prineville, Oregon data center; deal signed after state senate passed tax legislation – February 22, 2012
Apple lobbies Obama for tax holiday, wants to bring overseas bounty home – August 24, 2011
U.S Senate Democrat Schumer allies with Apple, other multinationals on repatriation tax talks – June 21, 2011
Governor signs tax break, Apple confirms it will build NC data center, investing at least $1 billion – June 3, 2009
North Carolina Senate approves tax law change for Apple Inc. in 40-8 vote – June 2, 2009
North Carolina lawmakers OK tax incentives for Apple Inc. – May 27, 2009
Not one analysts on Wall Street gives Apple any due consideration when it comes to cloud services. It’s only Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft Azure and that’s all the really matters to Wall Street. I suppose that’s because Amazon and Microsoft are selling their cloud services to other companies and that’s where the revenue comes in. Whatever Apple has in terms of the cloud, they’re not selling it to anyone and are unlikely to do so. Apple’s cloud will likely support their own infrastructure and be used for nothing else.
Huckleberry Hound?
Apple’s cloud services are too limited to be considered useful for business applications, or even sophisticated personal users. iCloud provides useful synchronisation for mail and calendar but music in the cloud is complicated by limitations on iTunes Match and Apple Music and storage is relatively expensive.
Application level sandboxes make it very difficult, and often impossible, for users who work on multimedia projects where it is logical to store related information in the same place. iCloud is also limited to a single level of folders so the proper organisation of material for large projects, or even simple projects, is not possible.
When seen as an adjunct to the iPhone, iCloud makes sense. Onedrive, on the other hand, makes better sense for Mac users who, in any case, must resort to Microsoft Office for most business applications after the dumbing down of Pages and Numbers to achieve compatibility with iOS.
For these reasons iCloud cannot be considered a competitive cloud platform and it is no surprise that this is ignored by analysts.
So, Apple is going to gamble on a new data center?
Sorry, couldn’t resist. 🙂