Microsoft’s ambitious undersea data center project, Project Natick, initially showed great promise during testing. However, despite its success in testing, it was later deemed impractical for real-world implementation and has since been discontinued.
Launched in 2016, Project Natick demonstrated impressive advancements as Microsoft’s undersea data centers operated with remarkable stability and experienced significantly lower equipment failure rates compared to land-based data centers. Nevertheless, after a 4-year testing period, Microsoft decided to halt the project. Noelle Walsh, head of Cloud Operations + Innovation (CO+I) at Microsoft, confirmed that the company has no further plans to pursue the construction of undersea data centers.
Despite the project’s discontinuation, Project Natick has provided valuable insights to Microsoft, particularly regarding the operation and resilience of servers in marine environments. The knowledge gained from this project will be leveraged in other future endeavors of the company. Microsoft has expressed its intention to utilize Project Natick as a research platform to explore innovative technologies like liquid cooling, aiming to enhance data center reliability and sustainability.
Although Microsoft’s decision to abandon Project Natick may be viewed as a setback, it presents an opportunity for the company to concentrate on developing new, more efficient, and sustainable solutions, particularly in response to the increasing demand for artificial intelligence (AI) services.
