Microsoft's Belady Gets Back to Building

christian-belady

Christian Belady is now the General Manager of Data Center Research at Microsoft Global Foundation Services (Photo credit: Microsoft Corp.).

After nearly a year at Microsoft Research, Christian Belady has returned to Global Foundation Services, the unit of Microsoft that builds the company's data centers. Belady will be the General Manager of Datacenter Research (DCR), reporting to GFS head Kevin Timmons.

The new position marks Belady's return to working on data center designs that will be implemented in upcoming facilities. That marks a shift from his post at the Extreme Computing Group at Microsoft Research, which was focused on a longer-term vision for transforming hardware design.

"DCR will be an advanced development lab (versus a traditional research lab), whose horizon is one step beyond the data centers we have on the drawing board today," Belady wrote in a blog post announcing his transition. "I am blessed to have yet another great opportunity."

After 11 months in the research unit, Belady said he was inspired by a recent visit to Microsoft's new modular data center in Quincy, Washington, which brought to life many of the design concepts he'd participated in during his time at GFS.

"I wanted to be part of that team again, it was that simple," Christian writes. " I also have complete respect and trust for the GFS management team in their values and strategic direction.  So when the leadership in GFS offered the opportunity, there was no question in my mind on how to proceed."

While Belady relished the opportunity to explore potentially paradigm-shifting hardware designs at the eXtreme Computing Group, the data center industry has entered an exciting phase of evolution in the design and construction of energy efficient data centers, one of Belady's favorite causes.

"Whatever you see today in our data centers, you’re not likely to see tomorrow, as we are a company that is constantly evolving and innovating," he said of Microsoft. "As a result, the opportunities are endless for its data center engineers and services operations team, and for the customers that we serve."