From the official SAS website

http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/CCF2009.html

SAS to build $70 million cloud computing facility

New cloud computing facility will support needed data-intensive customer solutions

CARY, NC  (Mar. 19, 2009)  –  SAS, the leader in business analytics software and services, announces today it is building a 38,000-square-foot cloud computing facility to provide the additional data-handling capacity needed to expand SAS’ OnDemand offerings and hosted solutions.

As the need for hosted solutions grows, new research and development jobs will be generated at SAS’ Cary, N.C., world headquarters, where the majority of R&D employees (more than 1,400) are located.

“This project is proof that, despite the down economy, SAS continues to grow and innovate,” said Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS. “The growing demand by our customers for hosted solutions has given us this opportunity to invest even further in North Carolina and the Cary community.”

In keeping with SAS’ commitment to protecting the environment, the facility will be built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for water and energy conservation. The sustainable construction methods encourage recycling of materials, similar to the Executive Briefing Center under construction on the Cary campus. SAS’ first LEED building, SAS Canada’s headquarters in Toronto, opened in April 2006.

In keeping with LEED standards, about 60 percent of the project’s construction and equipment spending will be in North Carolina.  Approximately 1,000 people will be involved in its design and construction.

The facility will include two 10,000-square-foot server farms. Server Farm 1 is anticipated to be on-line mid-2010 and support growth for three to five years.  Server Farm 2 will be constructed as a shell and will be populated with mechanical and electrical infrastructure once Server Farm 1 reaches 80 percent capacity.  The facility will be built on SAS’ Cary campus.

Apparently SAS Institute believes in creating jobs ( and thousands of them) during the recession ! Jim clearly is in top intellectual shape despite his err vintage. Imagine with just a browser and you could be crunching billions of bytes of data sitting from a beach in Goa! Thankfully they did not believe the hot air that McKinsey put out on cloud computing (read here http://smartdatacollective.com/Home/17942 )