Azure Data Center inside a shipping container

Disclaimer: Currently I am employed by Microsoft, but my views and thoughts are still my own. The reason I joined Microsoft was, the work Microsoft have been doing for last couple of years in Open Source Space. Today I am a advocate for Open Source representing Microsoft.

Microsoft has developed new type of data center. Similar to the underwater data center tested by Microsoft earlier, they have developed another type of data center. This time it is the size of shipping container. This new "Shipping Container Data Center" can be transported like any other shipping container.

As I understand is, with both the underwater and the shipping container is to be able to deploy the Azure capabilities where you need them. This removes the need of Internet connection to the public cloud.

My guess is it is going to be very similar to the Azure Stack Hub, but on steroids. Azure Stack Hub is just one rack, where here Microsoft can deploy several racks with in the space inside either a underwater or shipping container.

I would say, this is another way to be able to empower those who don't have the high speed and stable Internet connection we now take for granted.

Beside the commercial gains, this technology can also help cut off parts of humanity to advance, where they don't have access to the information in the same manner as lost of us a used to. Just top of my head I can think of several scenarios. For example, having access to large scale compute in academia or medicine, and not be dependent on the existing infrastructure where you need the compute.