Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb announced Tuesday morning that Microsoft is investing $1 billion into a new data center in northwest Indiana.
This is the fourth major data center announced in Indiana this year.
The plan is for Microsoft to build a new 245,000-square-foot data center on 489 acres at the Radius Industrial Park in La Porte. It’s expected to create up to 200 jobs by the end of 2032.
The campus will help power the Microsoft Cloud and support the next-level digital transformation spurred by the widespread adoption of cloud computing and AI (artificial intelligence). The La Porte facility will join the company’s worldwide network of cloud computing infrastructure of more than 60 Azure regions, more than 300 data centers, over 280,000 kilometers of network, and over 190 edge sites.
Microsoft plans to hire a variety of positions, including critical environment engineers, IT technicians and managers, inventory and asset technicians and managers, security personnel, and site managers. The timeline for construction and operations of the new datacenter is dependent on the design, planning and permitting process, which will start in cooperation with the City of La Porte later this year.
La Porte Mayor Tom Dermody says projects like these happen once in a lifetime and their effects are felt forever.
“What makes this even better is that we get to work with the talented and community-minded team at Microsoft. From the very beginning of this project, they have been committed and attentive to the needs of our community. We are incredibly excited to welcome them here and look forward to a strong collaboration long into the future,” said Dermody.
Holcomb says Indiana is committed to being a central hub in the global economy of the future.
“As a state, we’ve built a pro-growth business climate and implemented a future-focused framework to attract major investments in high-tech, high-growth sectors. We’re excited to welcome Microsoft’s new data center to Indiana and look forward to the incredible value add impact this will have on our statewide data driven ecosystem, new career opportunities, specifically the greater northwest Indiana community.”
1 comment
“It’s expected to create up to 200 jobs by the end of 2032.”
For those who don’t understand how Microsoft operates, the only jobs that will be offered to the local workforce are the security and maintenance jobs. All of the tech jobs will go to foreign H1B Work Visa holders, who will be deported if they lose their jobs. This allows Microsoft to pay them far less and to use them like slave labor.
These data centers are not going to be a good thing!