When CA shut down their last nuke plant, it almost universally stunted data center growth in that state for data centers and more.  Both norcal and socal have massive power issues, or rather a deficiency thereof leading to them that cannot be overcome, driving lots of shops to look "close as possible" for power, namely AZ.  I moved a few large companies networks into az facilities just for that reason - power, and we're ripe with data centers for that reason.  CA isn't the only place, either.

Another good reason, which I think people here take for granted, is good internet (user access, nap peering) and data transport access (read: municipal fiber).  As much as folks complain in az, internet is much worse elsewhere for the users or businesses with only choices of dated technology, especially when they have crappy isp's that don't invest in their core medium, ie. cable/coax or 2-wire dsl.  Cox still has little pockets of old crap coax around that people on it are plagued by, but dsl is far worse being simply stunted by physical limitations, and generally you get something of a choice with cox seemingly being more prevalent/available.  Sky is the limit for bandwidth with cable docsis these days, as much as you'll see with async pon fiber to the home services, so users win here for Internet usually always.

For businesses with big data needs, lots of fiber in the ground from a number of providers, we're a well connected city doing 100mb connections to dark fiber doing dwdm with 80 wavelengths of 10gbe per strand on it most anywhere in town.

Wireless too - Cox is rolling out mostly global municipal wifi soon too, but you also have an abundance of other choices for 802.11, top-end LTE cellular as well.

Living in the vaunted Silicon Valley tech mecca for a few years end of the 90's, I can say the worst part was getting "good" internet access sadly enough, and I've never had that issue in Phoenix.  Phones sucked there, data sucked (well, Ricochet was brand new then with phat 9600baud wireless data connections!), for being such an innovative place, the crappy carriers there totally kept them held back (ahem, at&t at the time), as did everything being old and too bureaucratic to repair (it *is* Cali...). 

As Stephen said, I also don't have to earthquake strap loose devices in a data center here either.

-mb



On 02/13/2015 09:13 AM, Stephen Partington wrote: