Wyoming scores another big data center investment

Microsoft continues to invest heavily in the data center market.

Shortly after announcing plans to build a $1.1 billion data center in Iowa, the company pledged to start building a $274 million facility in Wyoming later this spring and expects it to be operational in summer 2015.

“Microsoft is excited to expand its datacenter operations in Cheyenne,” said Dayne Sampson, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services group. “This will ensure the best possible delivery of cloud infrastructure and services to our current and future customers in Wyoming and the surrounding region.”

This investment brings Microsoft’s data center spending in Wyoming to more than $500 million. The company opened another center late last year, just west of Cheyenne.

“I have made growth of Wyoming’s technology sector a priority,” said Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead. “Wyoming has so many comparative advantages for data centers. I have worked with the legislature to position Wyoming as a competitive location for these high-valued projects. It is exciting to see these efforts produce results. I thank Microsoft for investing here and for the jobs and capital facilities it creates.”

Thanks to a combination of affordable energy, redundant fiber optics and a naturally cool climate to decrease costs for data center operations, Wyoming has become an enticing place for companies to build data centers

While the centers aren’t huge job creators, they’ve become attractive to states for tax purposes as they’re usually built in previously uninhabited locations.