Often I think Google is taking over the world and this is one of those times. Recently Google filed a patent for building self sustaining ships that use water and air generated power and cooling to operate as a data center. Seems a bit over the top and out there, but it might not be a bad idea. Not sure if I would want my data on one of the ships during a hurricane, but I would expect that like their other data centers, that all everything is redundant and replicated to other locations to eliminate any possible downtime.
With the prominence of cloud computing proliferating the news, the need for more inexpensive data centers is high on the radar. In the past, companies were building data centers in metropolitan areas, but that has slowed to a crawl because of the high risk of a disaster event (terrorism, pandemic, flood, etc.), not to mention the high cost of rent and utilities. Building something on the ocean that is self sustaining can reduce the cost substantially while by passing completely most, if not all, of the bureaucratic hurdles that come with most real estate transactions.
A detailed article of the operation can be found here. http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9937
