Microsoft tests underwater datacenter in the Scottish sea

Off the coast of Scotland’s Orkney Islands, waves crash, winds whip, and a damp fog from the sea hovers in the air nearly year round.

And now, underneath Scotland’s cold, turbulent waters, a data center hums away, providing the Scottish isles’ coastal communities with high speed cloud computing capabilities and internet connectivity.

On Tuesday, Microsoft announced that it had deployed the second phase of Project Natick: a “moonshot” research project to test the viability of underwater datacenters. It placed the datacenter off the coast of the Orkney Islands, which are at the northernmost tip of Scotland. Microsoft will monitor the device for the next 12 months to see how what was an idea on paper just four years ago functions in the real world. Read more…

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