The barge floating in the San Francisco Bay that was discussed last week is likely a mobile showroom with a party deck. This way, the facility can be taken anywhere around the world (by land or by sea) and show the company's wares.

Wired published “8 Steps to Building a Modern Datacenter” highlighting features of modern data centers. Companies are trying to work hard with a consistent need for storage and computer resources. The Wired article focuses on the "what" and not the "how".

Be Modular

• There is a greater need for compatible frameworks and consoles across network, server and storage silos.
• Modular design is simple and flexible.
• Much smaller and compact single rack solutions.
• Incorporate fixed, vendor-defined ratios for computing resources and storage capacity.
• The IT hardware has also gotten much smaller while delivering the required computing power, over the last 2-3 years.