Data center is more commonly referred to as “cloud computing.” A user’s data is essentially floating in a cloud (the Internet) and not really anywhere – but everywhere, accessible to them from home, work and mobile devices, and always backed up and available.
According to Clark County Professor Dwight Hughes, there are more than 14 10,000-square-foot or larger data centers in the Vancouver/Portland area, and Facebook, Microsoft and Google each have megasized multimillion-dollar data centers in the Columbia River Gorge. Many banks, hospitals, retail, financial, auto dealerships, government (local, state, federal), law enforcement, lumber mills and other industries run their own in-house data centers that require 24/7 onsite monitoring and response.