GM doubles down on its internal IT

GM, which last October announced they were bringing 3000 IT jobs back into the company after changing the way their IT division worked from using outside contractors to internal assets, has started adding a second new datacenter to their US operations in the Detroit area as a major step in their plan to reduce their number of datacenters worldwide from 23 to 2.

The transformation goal is not just for the hardware and facilities; of the 10,000 GM IT jobs currently handled by outside contractors, GM plans to move 90 percent back in-house.

The first of their new generation datacenters took three years to build and cost $130 million. The new datacenter is expected to go from last month’s ground-breaking to fully operational in about 12 months. The difference in speed stems from the new facility being a copy of the last design, with about $100 million in building costs and almost $160 million in IT equipment when the datacenter is fully operational. The site could also support as many as 1,500 jobs.

When completed, the new datacenter will also be available as a mirror for the primary site, solving the issue of DR/BC for GM at this level. The two facilities are within 50 miles of each other but will presumably have different access points to the Internet, network backbones, and the power grid to allow for continuity of services in the event of a significant disaster. 

The new facility is being built on existing GM property, the Milford Proving Ground (the home of the GM Performance Division), which has been a design and testing center for GM since 1924 and covers almost 4000 acres.