It all started at the ThinkWeek event at Microsoft in 2014, this event is to gather employees and share their ideas out-of-the-box. An idea popped up to save energy and provide a quick cloud service to the coastal population. Later this idea turned into a project called Project Natick. Essentially it is an underwater data center. Underwater data centers are an innovative solution for storing and processing data that offers numerous benefits over traditional land-based facilities.

Data center environments must stay consistent regarding things like humidity and temperature. Otherwise, the costly equipment inside them could begin malfunctioning. Moreover, data center clients want assurances that the valuable information stored within a facility will be available whenever they need it, and maintaining consistency comes into play there, too. Here are four ways machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are upending data center management. Energy efficiency is a constant concern for data center managers. In 2016, Google started working on a project that involved using AI to meet climate control needs in the brand's data centers.

In the 2015 film "Creed," aged boxing legend Rocky Balboa stares up at the sky in confusion after his young protege tells him a smartphone picture has been saved in the cloud. Rocky might feel even more befuddled if he heard about Microsoft's experiment in putting the cloud's computer servers under the sea. As crzay as it sounds, the underwater data center initiative, called Project Natick, could revolutionize the way companies Internet services such as streaming video, music, or games. Microsoft's first underwater test involved a car-sized capsule that weighs more than 17,236 kilograms and has a computing power equivalent to 300 desktop computers. That's tiny compared with existing data centers.