Data Center locations are kept secret by many, but what is harm of the public knowing where a company has its data centers? You can create many scenarios where you can worry about worst case scenarios. But, one good side of sharing where your data center sites are located is it mproves your relationship with the local community. When Google first built the Dalles data center, multiple people including the local officials were held to confidentiality agreements. Contrast that with Google openly discussing its latest data center in Hamina with sea water cooling.
Microsoft's Dublin data center was disclosed by gov't officials.
According to an Irish business news report, Microsoft is planning to spend millions of euros expanding its two-year-old US$500m data center in Dublin by more than a third....At the opening of the data center, then Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said he believed that in the future companies would rely on cloud-based delivery models, emphasizing the importance of large scale investments in infrastructure services such as those seen by Microsoft in Ireland.
Microsoft's Virginia Data center expansion had local officials disclosing details.
Microsoft plans $150 million expansion in MecklenburgSeptember 23, 2011 1:29 PM
Microsoft Corp. plans to expand its data center in Mecklenburg County, creating 10 new jobs.
The company’s $499 million investment last year created 50 jobs and represented the largest economic investment in Southern Virginia. The expansion will increase the data center’s cloud infrastructure and services capacities.
Microsoft will spend $150 million to build a new facility at its site.
“Securing this state-of-the-art data center was an important win for the commonwealth, and additional growth will further establish Virginia as an Information Technology leader,” Gov. Bob McDonnell said in a statement.
With Google and Microsoft relaxing its data center location disclosures of site location, the benefits of disclosure look like they are winning vs. secrecy. Facebook's Open Compute Project is another example of openness and disclosure.