Datacenters have a hard time keeping their cool. Literally. And with more and more datacenters coming online all over the world, calls for innovative solutions to “cool the cloud” are getting loud. So, Ben Cutler and the Special Projects team at Microsoft Research decided to try to beat the heat by using one of the best natural venues for cooling off on the planet: the ocean. That led to Project Natick, Microsoft’s prototype plan to deploy a new class of eco-friendly datacenters, under water, at scale, anywhere in the world, from decision to power-on, in 90 days. Because, presumably for Special Projects, go big or go home.

In today’s podcast we find out a bit about what else the Special Projects team is up to, and then we hear all about Project Natick and how Ben and his team conceived of, and delivered on, a novel idea to deal with the increasing challenges of keeping datacenters cool, safe, green, and, now, dry as well!