GM unveils its $130M Detroit data center

After recent news from Facebook and Yahoo about their new, huge data centers, automaker General Motors is revealing its own data center ambitions.

General Motors today officially unveiled its state-of-the-art $130 million enterprise data center at Warren, Detroit.

The 5,040-square-foot facility has 48 work stations and a 955-square-foot video wall composed of 28 configurable screens, designed to continuously monitor use of data across operations. The modular design is expected to handle computer simulations on vehicle design, fuel economy, safety, and quality.

This is the first of the two data centers expected to serve as the “computing backbone” for the company’s global operations. General Motors hopes to consolidate 23 data centers and three information technology suppliers around the world into two facilities by the year 2015.

General Motor’s data center consolidation is “part of an overarching strategy to transform not only information technology but also allow GM’s business operations to be more responsive to our customers, quicker to market and deliver on our objectives to shareholders,” said Randy Mott, vice president and chief information officer, in a statement on the news.

The other data center is a $100 million project planned at Milford. The two are in close proximity, between a 25-50 mile radius, in order to allow for “mirrored” data, so if one facility is offline, the other can have the same data available without interruption.

“Having a single nerve center for our global operations will get newer vehicle designs and technologies into our customers’ hands quicker and improve the bottom line,” said Dan Akerson, chairman and chief executive of General Motors.

Image credit: <a href="photo credit: Leonardo Rizzi/Flickr