State and local officials in Iowa announced on Friday that Microsoft will begin constructing a new data center in Iowa. This will be Microsoft’s second data center in the region, bringing its total investment to nearly $2 billion, the largest in the state to date.

“Records are made to be broken and Microsoft now has the record, so we’d be pleased to entertain the next investment that would break that record,” said Gov. Terry Branstad at a news conference. “I think this is just the beginning of what’s going to happen. It will be the catalyst for many more in the years ahead.”

The data-center will occupy 1.2 million square feet on 154 acres, according to a report in The Des Moines Register. Approximately $20 million dollars has been provided by the state’s High Quality Jobs programme to assist the tech giants project.

Microsoft’s recent investment in the region is part of a growing trend among tech giants – both Google and Facebook have invested large amounts of money in data-centers within the state. With cloud computing on the rise, and cloud providers like Amazon and IBM investing in infrastructure in recent months, Microsoft’s new data-center is believed to be a sign of its aim to improve the “feature set” and lowering the price of its Azure public cloud services.

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(Image credit: Anontio E. Da Silva Campos)    Antonio E. Da Silva Campos