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UA and Microsoft announce partnership to create cloud infrastructure

Posted at 1:46 PM, Oct 17, 2018
and last updated 2018-10-17 17:30:35-04

The University of Arizona and Microsoft announced a new partnership on Wednesday.

The two will work to solve one of the biggest emerging problems in cloud computing: how to make datacenters more efficient and less energy reliant. 

So, what are datacenters? They are centralized locations for storing services and computing and networking equipment. They are what make cloud computing possible. Industry analysts say the demand for datacenter capacity grew tremendously over the last five years, when there was already an estimated 3 million datacenters in the U.S.

The UA and Microsoft are creating the Cloud Infrastructure Renewal Center, or CIRC. This will be the first multi-year joint research collaboration Microsoft has established with a university to create a CIRC.The center will include UA researchers doing different things, like architects, optical engineers and material scientists. Those researchers will focus on developing sustainable datacenters. 

UA President Robert Robbins says, "Sustainable cloud growth requires the advancement of renewable energy sources and storage systems, faster networks and innovative architectural design geared toward solving difficult engineering problems."