Other companies that already have data centers in Wyoming include Echostar and Green House Data.

The new data center will help Microsoft as it shifts toward hosting more of its products, rather than selling software that customers install on their own computers. In addition to its platform-as-a-service offering, Azure, last year Microsoft began selling Office 365, a service that offers hosted email and collaboration services. It also is hoping to grow its Bing search engine, which requires data centers to serve search results to users.

The IDG News Service