Posted on 01/09/2017 1:52:20 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Apple is seeking permission to conduct "high-tech manufacturing" and to build data-center server gear in a Mesa, Arizona, facility, according to a notice published Monday by the US federal government.
A notification published in the Federal Register on Monday said Apple was looking for approval from the Foreign-Trade Zones Board to produce "finished products" in a special zone that exempts it from customs duty payments.
"Apple Inc has repurposed the site as a global data command center that will conduct high-tech manufacturing of finished data center cabinets for other data centers," according to a document filed by Mesa on behalf of Apple in June and made public Monday.
The filings come as Apple has come under fire by President-elect Donald Trump for producing the iPhone and other popular products overseas.
The Arizona effort would mark a rare instance of a US tech company manufacturing and assembling a finished product domestically, where labor costs are higher. Apple's effort appears limited to equipment for its internal operations, however, rather than for a mass-market consumer product.
"The nature of the product is not for end users but for other global data centers what will be supported from the site," according to the July filing.
In June, an Apple official wrote to the Foreign-Trade Zones Board asking for the approval, saying the company wanted to meet "an aggressive production go-live timeline of September, 2016."
The servers Apple uses in facilities such as its data centers in Oregon and North Carolina are currently built and tested on-site, according to a person with knowledge of Apple's data operations. Apple is now moving to consolidate that work in Mesa, where it plans to build and configure its servers before shipping them to other American data centers, the person said.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
The fact that Apple has to have permission from the Federal government IS THE PROBLEM.
I would support the effort, and hope for Apple to see ways the working process could be repeated in efforts to manufacture products for domestic sales.
Baby steps...
Every job is a positive step in the right direction.
Gee. I wonder why they did not chose to locate next door in California?
The Mac Mini is available as a server.
It’s an incredible machine and reasonably priced for a Mac.
Go Trump!
As this article cites, and as some people know on FR, Apple is gearing up to manufacture all their own DC gear. Apple has been suspecting “modifications” of hardware destined to be run in their data centers happening between the point of origin and their final destination at Apple.
I’ve been in a couple of Apple data centers, they are impressive.
I believe I know what cabinets are being discussed in this article - impressive for a CoLo but I won’t be buying them for our CoLo due to cost and our already built in physical security and power/cooling capabilities.
When I was a human resources rep. for a staffing agency that worked for Foxconn, I often went into a plant that was such a zone. Very hard to get into and you’re searched and screened when you leave, like an airport terminal.
Apple products are nowhere near capable of data center use. In the newest data center in NC, Apple uses HP ProLiant servers and Teradata data warehouse systems. This is where the iCloud lives. Big stuff.
And lots of support gear including power generation/cogen, and Apple is enamored of using renewables.
Huh? What is that? Isn't anything in made in the USA exempt from customs duty payments?
The Mac Mini server is widely used.
And capable.
Apple bump for later....
looking for approval from the Foreign-Trade Zones Board
Is that the Free Trade that so terrifies us?
Tucson would be even better!
My take is the components are foreign made and Apple doesn’t want to pay duty on them.
Oh, that could be it.
California has been chasing out much of it's industrial manufacturing for the last decade or two. Used to have the best surfboards manufactured here, only to see them driven out by overzealous regulation. Anything to do with chemicals sees a lot of overregulation driving companies eastward or out of the nation.
Best machine ever. I’m posting, using my Mac Mini Server. Getting a bit old (2010 model) but has served me very well. And it’s a space saver compared to the towers I used to use.
“Apple products are nowhere near capable of data center use. In the newest data center in NC, Apple uses HP ProLiant servers and Teradata data warehouse systems. This is where the iCloud lives. Big stuff.”
Besides the cabinets mentioned for other CoLos to use, they are looking to build their own rack mounted servers due to security concerns. They are not like the X-Serve crap of a few years ago.
They do have HP but also a massive amount of Dells.
And they have made a big push into Google Cloud along with their presence in Azure. They are trying to downsize their presence in AWS which was costing about a billion a year.
Now, Wayne, that won't be an issue when we build that high-speed rail system between Tucson and Phoenix...it will connect to the light rail lines in both cities, and one won't need to use a car at all!
Think of all the accidents on I-10 that won't happen once the trains are being used!
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