Scott Noteboom Moves from Yahoo to Apple

scott-noteboom

Industry executive Scott Noteboom has left Yahoo for a position at Apple.

Scott Noteboom, who in recent years has led the data center team at Yahoo, has taken a position at Apple. Noteboom now lists Apple as his employer on his LinkedIn profile, but it's not entirely clear what his role will be. Noteboom's move was first reported by GigaOm.

Noteboom has overseen a major data center expansion at Yahoo, which has adopted an innovative "chicken coop" design that has improved the energy efficiency of the company's infrastructure, slashing its power bills in the process. Yahoo has built new "coops" in Lockport, N.Y.; Quincy, Washington; and Avenches, Switzerland. The company has also just rolled out a new data center in Singapore.

Apple Data Centers Supporting iCloud

Apple's data center infrastructure has been the focus of major speculation since the company began building a huge data center in Maiden, North Carolina to power its iCloud offering, which went live earlier this month. Apple's iDataCenter team was initially led by eBay veteran Olivier Sanche, who tragically passed away in 2010. Shortly afterward, Microsoft data center chief Kevin Timmons was reportedly headed to Apple (although not as Sanche's replacement), but last week began a new post as CTO of colocation provider CyrusOne.

It's not clear what happens now at Yahoo. The company is in the midst of assessing its options after the sudden firing of CEO Carol Bartz last month. Several private equity firms are said to be weighing takeover bids for Yahoo, perhaps partnering with either Microsoft or Google.

Earlier this year Yahoo announced plans to invest at least $500 million in further expanding its data center network. The company was also preparing a new data center design for a series of next-generation facilities it plans to build in 2012 and beyond. The fate of these initiatives appears to be tied to whether the company remains independent or is acquired.