Apple Building Data Center in Iowa

Apple plans to build a $1.37 billion data center in Iowa. The company will purchase about 2,000 acres of land located in the city of Waukee and will receive a $207.8 million incentive approved by the city council. More than 550 jobs is estimated to be generated and the new data center will "play an important role" for the App Store says Tim Cook. Let's hope they have the beef up security on their networks before expanding.

The Iowa data center will join Apple facilities in California, Nevada, Oregon and North Carolina, which also host services such as iCloud, Apple Music and the App Store.

Why the hell wouldn't they incorporate it at their new space ship?

So Iowa is paying apple nearly $40k a job? Just more corporate handouts.

aokman said:

Why the hell wouldn't they incorporate it at their new space ship?

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Cost of power in the region. Wages probably also factor in. Most of your day to day staff that needs to be local to the data center can now be paid less since the cost of living is lower. Also cost of the facility itself. Adding a floor or extra sq footage to the new campus was probably prohibitively expensive compared to this.

aokman said:

Why the hell wouldn't they incorporate it at their new space ship?

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It's in the middle of a freaking city dude.



Think about it....

kju1 said:

Cost of power in the region. Wages probably also factor in. Most of your day to day staff that needs to be local to the data center can now be paid less since the cost of living is lower. Also cost of the facility itself. Adding a floor or extra sq footage to the new campus was probably prohibitively expensive compared to this.

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Missing one important factor. Location.

I'd bet this is their Chicago data center without needed to be located in Chicago. If you take a quick look at a geography map, you'll see that Waukee is directly West of Chicago across a major interstate, but it's also connected directly to Kansas City as well. Kansas City is becoming another important hub in the internet because of it's central location.






https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/assets/4465279/backbone_2000.png



https://www.vox.com/a/internet-maps

This might also help explain some things... (Although this map and the one above are way out of date)

Lower power cost, building cost, wages, and centrally located. Seems like a good idea.

bman212121 said:

Missing one important factor. Location.

I'd bet this is their Chicago data center without needed to be located in Chicago. If you take a quick look at a geography map, you'll see that Waukee is directly West of Chicago across a major interstate, but it's also connected directly to Kansas City as well. Kansas City is becoming another important hub in the internet because of it's central location.


View attachment 34451



https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/assets/4465279/backbone_2000.png

https://www.vox.com/a/internet-maps

This might also help explain some things... (Although this map and the one above are way out of date)

Click to expand...

I implied the location was sub optimal.

kju1 said:

I implied the location was sub optimal.

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DC's in the midwest are starting to become very popular actually. Low energy costs, and decreased risk of natural disasters. Not to mention, lots of spare land.

5-10 years ago, there weren't very many, if any, major DC's out here, just smaller places for colo. Now large companies are starting to build big boys out here. My buddy is an electrician in the new Google DC east of Omaha. He's been in there working for 3 years now, and it's still not done.

kju1 said:

I implied the location was sub optimal.

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Yes I agree the campus location is sub optimal. I think it wasn't implied though that Iowa is a better geographical location than say Nevada because of issues with latency. You could probably find a location on the West coast that mimics Iowa's wages and property values, but it wouldn't make up for some of the other advantages the location in Iowa does.

Iowa is a leading producer of wind energy, there are huge windmill farms all over the state. Des Moines is a fairly large city with a lot of tech and money rolling through it due to all of the insurance companies. I think it's a good move.

tenjuna said:

Iowa is a leading producer of wind energy, there are huge windmill farms all over the state. Des Moines is a fairly large city with a lot of tech and money rolling through it due to all of the insurance companies. I think it's a good move.

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Wells Fargo also has a pretty sizable presence in the area. The I-80 corridor isn't just for transporting weed anymore, it seems.

capt_cope said:

So Iowa is paying apple nearly $40k a job? Just more corporate handouts.

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More than that; likely 90% of those jobs are just the construction.

It's supposed to be 55ish full-time people when completed and 500+ for the construction.

tenjuna said:

Iowa is a leading producer of wind energy, there are huge windmill farms all over the state. Des Moines is a fairly large city with a lot of tech and money rolling through it due to all of the insurance companies. I think it's a good move.

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I agree about that part of Iowa and the windmills. There's probably 10K of them between Des Moines and Omaha.

bman212121 said:

Missing one important factor. Location.

I'd bet this is their Chicago data center without needed to be located in Chicago. If you take a quick look at a geography map, you'll see that Waukee is directly West of Chicago across a major interstate, but it's also connected directly to Kansas City as well. Kansas City is becoming another important hub in the internet because of it's central location.


View attachment 34451



https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/assets/4465279/backbone_2000.png

https://www.vox.com/a/internet-maps

This might also help explain some things... (Although this map and the one above are way out of date)

Click to expand...

You would have to be crazy to build in Chicago or Illinois. Our taxes are out of control.

capt_cope said:

So Iowa is paying apple nearly $40k a job? Just more corporate handouts.

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The city is giving Apple a $9m/yr break on property taxes over 20 years. In exchange, the city still gets $5m/yr in property tax for what was otherwise fallow cornfields, plus a bunch of other taxes and related business, plus up to $100m kicked into the city's 'parks `n kiddie pools' fund.

Unlike the Foxconn con, this is not 'free money for jerbs!' This is the city cutting margins in order to make bank on volume. This is good business.

capt_cope said:

So Iowa is paying apple nearly $40k a job? Just more corporate handouts.

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$207.8 million, it's chump change.

In about 2003, the IRS told Symantec that they had undervalued some IP that they had transferred from Europe and owed an additional $1 Billion dollars in taxes.

So I am thinking at that time, a company that isn't really even a huge company, not GM, not Coke-a-Cola, not Proctor and Gamble, had their taxes raised by $1 billion dollars on the profits they made for the year ....l hmmmm

Yea, I concluded that I can not conceptualize how much money is floating around the world. I thought a million was big but a million is a couple of houses, a billion is a few more houses, the point being. Today, $300 million dollars is 10 or 12 house for average joe people and in some parts of the country, far less than that. $210 million is chump change, $210 million doesn't buy anyone shit when you are talking about a big corporation bringing is 500 jobs, construction for a large plant, and all the other bennies that a deal like this involves.

This isn't a handout, it's a bid and it's business and it isn't corruption. If you think it represents corruption, you don't have any concept of what corruption looks like at this level. Just like I can't conceive of how much money there is out there in the wild wild world. It is simply beyond my life's experience to comprehend.

XenIneX said:

The city is giving Apple a $9m/yr break on property taxes over 20 years. In exchange, the city still gets $5m/yr in property tax for what was otherwise fallow cornfields, plus a bunch of other taxes and related business, plus up to $100m kicked into the city's 'parks `n kiddie pools' fund.

Unlike the Foxconn con, this is not 'free money for jerbs!' This is the city cutting margins in order to make bank on volume. This is good business.

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I should have used /s at the end to make the sarcasm more obvious.