I met some folks at http://www.continuitysa.co.za/ who have been using shipping containers for years for data centers in South Africa.

Mobile Data Centre

The ContinuitySA Mobile Data Centre is a new and dynamic product that will mitigate a number of classic Data Centre hazards.
Each Mobile Data Centre is fully equipped with UPS units and Backup Diesel Generators. Key features of the Mobile Data Centre :
• RAPID IMPLEMENTATION.
• RELATIVELY LOST COST.
• TOTALLY CUSTOMISABLE.
• EASILY CONNECTABLE.
• SELF-CONTAINED AND MOBILE.
• SUPPLEMENTS EXISTING BCM STRATEGY.

Recently, I met an oil and gas company who is seriously evaluating the container data centers from Verari, Dell, HP, and Sun to build data center capacity quickly and cost effective for their clients. I haven't had a chance to to clear any discussion of what they are doing with their PR team, but it was interesting their excitement to use containers.

In the past there has been a huge focus on data centers for financial, but as we all know it is no longer popular to say "I work in the Financial Market." Energy (oil, gas, renewable) is the hot area, and needs compute resources to be deployed quickly. Repeated words I heard were scalable, modular, quick deployment, and cost effective.

I'll keep my fingers crossed the PR group let's me say more.