Iceland's year-around low ambient temperatures permit free cooling, says Rhodes. "Chiller plants are not required, resulting in a significant reduction in power cost. If a wholesale client should decide they want cooling at the server, there is a natural cold-water aquifer on the campus that can be used to accommodate their needs."

Depending on where the customer is, the trade-off for locating data centers based on power, cooling or other factors, can, of course, be incrementally more network latency -- the delay caused by signals travelling through one or several thousands of miles of fiber, plus, possibly, another network device or two. For example, one-way transit from the data center to London or Europe adds 18 milliseconds, to the United States, about 40 milliseconds.

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"Dry places" aren't necessarily in cool locations. i/o Data Centers' facility, which according to the company is one of the world's largest data centers, is located, as the facility's name suggests, in Phoenix, Arizona.