Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge cited a couple of Russian publications touting Microsoft’s upcoming arrival in Siberia. Microsoft’s construction could happen somewhere between the southern Siberia cities of Irkutsk and Angarsk, according to the report.

The scale will be less than that of the other two datacenters in Dublin and Chicago. Power and Internet connectivity do not appear to be a problem, given that Microsoft touted energy stability as an asset in a Kommersant article.

With 10,000 servers, Siberia’s Microsoft outpost would have a tenth of what Dublin will support. But Microsoft’s datacenter should be the biggest one in Russia when completed, said CNews.

Microsoft’s choice of location boiled down to proximity to potential customers along with other factors, the report said. Irkutsk has the power and the telecom capacity to support connectivity to the datacenter.

Where those potential customers might reside on a geographic basis is another story. Irkutsk’s population density rates less than four people per square kilometer.

Perhaps Microsoft anticipates a lot of usage from Siberian visitors from the north, and Mongolians from the south. Or as one commenter on Slashdot suggested, maybe the deal is a quid pro quo arrangement between Microsoft and the Russian government: you crack down on software pirates, and we’ll invest in a datacenter in Siberia.

Stranger things have happened in the world.

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“Scoble is so credible as a Microsoft blogger that he is viewed as the voice of the company across the globe. When Ted Demopoulos, principal of Demopoulos Associates, an information technology consulting company, was traveling in Russia recently, he stopped in Surgut, Siberia, where he was surprised to find Scoble fans. “I’m out in the middle of nowhere and they ask me about Scoble,” says Demopoulos. “To them, Scoble is the voice of Microsoft.”

From Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

I’m waving to my friends in Russia! That’s really an honor.

Thanks to Peter Dawson for sending that to me.

By the way, I play a small part in that article, which is one of the better ones on the topic of corporate blogging.

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

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