There is a lot of news out there about the acquisition and what it means. One question that is interesting to the data center community is what happens to LinkedIn's data center infrastructure when they are part of Microsoft.

Let's start with the press release which is here. http://news.microsoft.com/2016/06/13/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin/#sm.0001oz1nmex7gedxpaa28q5zji3ou

“LinkedIn will retain its distinct brand, culture and independence.
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“The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world’s professionals,” Nadella said. “Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet.”
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“Just as we have changed the way the world connects to opportunity, this relationship with Microsoft, and the combination of their cloud and LinkedIn’s network, now gives us a chance to also change the way the world works,” Weiner said”

So part of making the LinkedIn customers feel good is to let them know the brand and culture will be maintained and LinkedIn will be independent. Satya then states with Microsoft LinkedIn will grow faster while supporting growth of Office 365 and Dynamics. And, there will be a combination of Microsoft's Cloud and LinkedIn's network.

So the independence is for the brand and some teams in LinkedIn, but not the team that runs the DC infrastructure which includes the data centers, network, and some software services. An example of a software service is the ability to sign-in to LinkedIn with a Microsoft sign-in. Simple. what about the data center infrastructure that will be connected to the Microsoft Cloud? Not so easy.

Where is LinkedIn's DC infrastructure? They celebrated their last move from retail to wholesale space in this blog post. https://engineering.linkedin.com/blog/2015/11/introducing-linkedins-west-coast-data-center. This post announces their green data center efforts in Informart's data center in Hillsboro.

When LinkedIn made decisions on its datacenter locations it focused on how best to service their users. Now their biggest user and their owner Microsoft needs to be served. And part of that service is lower latency and higher bandwidth connections to Microsoft's Cloud. It's a long ways from Hillsboro to Quincy, WA. Seems things would work so much better if LinkedIn was at the same site as Microsoft's cloud.

“In the last twelve months LinkedIn’s storage and processing needs have grown by 34 percent. That’s massive. And that growth is on top of the 29 megawatts of capacity in our current data centers worldwide – 26 megawatts are domestic and the other three international. We are also working to deploy applications on the nearly 6,500 servers in our Singapore data center before it goes live in early 2016.

The Production Engineering Operations (PEO) team has to work to stay ahead of this always growing demand to allow us to continue to provide our members the dependable and reliable services they expect from LinkedIn. But it’s also important that we remain environmentally sound. For these reasons, we’re excited to announce that LinkedIn’s third domestic data center will be located in Hillsboro, Oregon, just outside of Portland.”

DatacenterKnowledge reports on the other LinkedIn locations. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/02/12/linkedin-will-add-third-data-center-next-year/