Edible Apple

Despite all of the attention directed towards Apple’s ginormous data center in North Carolina, the Cupertino-based company has even deeper data center plans in the pipeline. Data Center Knowledge is reporting that that Apple recently committed to lease space at a third party data center located in Santa Clara, California.

In April, Apple signed a seven-year lease for 2.28 megawatts of critical power load in a new data center being built in Santa Clara, Calif. by DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT), a leading developer of wholesale data center space. The lease is scheduled to commence in the third quarter (July to September), when the building opens.

DuPont Fabros disclosed the Santa Clara lease in its first quarter earnings, but did not reveal the name of the tenant, which is consistent with its policies. In a conference call with analysts, company executives described the tenant as a “Fortune 50 technology company with excellent credit.” But multiple industry sources have since confirmed that the tenant is Apple.

With its expanded Internet infrastructure, Apple’s IT capacity is as high as its ever been which is even more evidence that Apple has ambitious cloud and streaming plans in the pipeline. Note that Apple recently purchased the iCloud.com domain name for $4.6 million. Further, earlier today we highlighted a job posting from Apple looking for a Media Streaming Engineering Manager.

Whatever Apple’s planning, it certainly seems like it’s going to be big.

DCK relays that this appears to be the first time Apple has leased out third-party Data Center space before, an attractive proposition for companies “that need to deploy additional data center space quickly, as wholesale space can be delivered more rapidly than building a new data center.”

Space wise, the newly leased space occupies approximately 11,000 square feet which is completely dwarfed by the 500,000 square feet Apple’s Data Center in North Carolina occupies. Every little bit helps, we suppose, but to put things in perspective remember that some of the largest data centers operated by the likes of Google and Microsoft only check in at around 250,000 square feet.

So again, with all that data center space at its disposal, Apple must have something big in the pipeline.