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Microsoft data centre guru skips over to cloud-flirty Apple
Running up and down the stairs
Apple has poached Microsoft's data centre general manager Kevin Timmons, as Jobs' outfit gets serious about clouds.
He is still listed as working at Microsoft as the company's data centre services boss on his LinkedIn account.
Timmons only joined the software vendor in June 2009, so his departure - first reported by the Green Data Center Blog - to Apple will undoubtedly come as a blow to Microsoft.
Interestingly, Microsoft plucked Timmons out of Yahoo!, where he had worked for 13 years and assisted in building the huge server infrastructure that once powered Yahoo!'s search, hosting and adverting services.
During his time at Microsoft Timmons was tasked with helping to build an energy efficient infrastructure beneath Microsoft's cloud and online services at the firm's then newly-created data centre division.
Presumably he'll have a similar remit at Apple, but details about his new job are yet to revealed.
The move comes as Apple readies its North Carolina data centre for action. Cupertino has recently been making cloudy motions, without nailing its exact plans for the skyward tech.
As we reported yesterday, Apple has also been on the lookout for a "cloud systems software engineer" web services software engineer. ®
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In his final blog post for Microsoft, Timmons wrote: "Our team is continuing to evolve our modular building strategies for even more energy efficiency and we will continue to share our best practices with others in the industry."
Who knew that his caring-sharing nature with other players in the market meant he would take a job at Apple?