Portable data centers will be key to supporting the surging demand for online services, but equipment vendors need to start designing products especially for them, a Microsoft engineer said Wednesday.

Microsoft has already shown its enthusiasm for portable data centers, which cram hundreds of servers into a standard 20-foot (6.1 meter) shipping container that can be delivered wherever it's needed, so long as there is a power supply and network connection.

The company has said it will put more than 200 of them on the first floor of a data center it's building in Chicago, and it is already operating at least one of its online services, Virtual Earth, from a portable data center in Colorado.

"The idea of modular, portable data centers is key to the industry’s future," said Daniel Costello, Microsoft director of data center research, in a presentation at GigaOM's Structure 08 conference in San Francisco. "That’s why I’m here to talk about data centers, not just for Microsoft but for our customers as well."

Buying these boxes from server vendors can be more energy-efficient and cost-effective than building a new, traditional data center, he said, and Microsoft sees them as more than just a way to add extra computing capacity at short notice. "We see them as a primary packaging unit," he said.

Using shipping containers is part of an effort by Microsoft to radically rethink its data centers, as it tries to add more computing capacity in a way that is cost effective and power efficient. "At Microsoft, we're questioning every component in the data center, up to and including the roof," Costello said. That includes "eliminating concrete from our data center bills."

"The definition of a datacenter has changed. It's not just bricks and mortar any more, and moving forward, we think it can be a lot more energy efficient," he said.

But vendors building portable data centers today are filling them with equipment that was designed for traditional data centers. "Moving forward, we need to design systems specifically for this form factor. If we look at the containers, that form factor will change over time as well."

Microsoft has approached every major server vendor about providing it with equipment, Costello said. He said he thinks "all major vendors" will offer portable data centers within the next two years. Vendors offering them today include Sun, Verari Systems, Rackable Systems and American Power Conversion.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.