APPLE HIRES MICROSOFT DATA CENTER GURU; iTUNES IN THE CLOUD?

Apple has hired Kevin Timmons away from Microsoft, where he was general manager of Microsoft’s data centers. Not only that, but Timmons apparently was directly responsible for rolling out Microsoft’s cloud and data presence at 50% of the cost estimated by other managers, while maintaining peak efficiency.

Last year, Apple’s Steve Jobs dismissed Cupertino’s ambitions to bring iTunes to the cloud, saying that they still thought that downloads and not streaming were the cornerstone of digital media.

Even at the time, everyone knew he was being disingenuous: Apple had recently built a massive North Carolina data center for unknown purposes, and services like Netflix and Spotify have amply proven that a la carte streaming is what consumers actually want.

Still, Apple’s total hegemony over the music industry is based off the concept of downloads; take away the idea that users need to pay a buck to download an MP3, and Apple’s iTunes empire falls.

What Jobs was doing was attempting to buy some more time. Apple will bring iTunes to the cloud, but it needs to do so while retaining the core iTunes business, which is downloads. This means cloud locker storage, such as Amazon just introduced with Cloud Locker… and if rumors are anything to go by, we’ll see Apple roll out just that sort of product in the next few months.

But maybe Apple has something even bigger up its sleeve? The evidence is certainly mounting that Apple intends to make a massive cloud-based push that is far, far bigger than just a cloud-based music locker.

Rumor has it that Apple’s North Carolina data center isn’t the only data center Apple is setting up. In fact, rumors are circulating that Apple is setting up data centers both nationally and abroad. If these are true, Timmons’ hire likely represents a huge push into the cloud on Apple’s part… and if history is anything to go by, the repercussions of that will likely be market shaking.