a server dedicated to a specific software function such as email and security. Applications including e-mail are housed in servers, powerful computers accessed by authorized staff. Switches in data centers transmit traffic to individual applications in the data center. www.TechnicalPDF.com A Data Center Switches direct traffic to servers Servers with applications and databases Switches Raised floor for electrical wiring, water pipes that carry water for air conditioning, and protection from water damage. Figure 2-3 A data center. Data centers come in a variety of sizes. They can be located in an organization's branch as well their headquarters. They are also at cloud providers' sites. For example, a small to medium-sized company may have a data center with only a few servers if the bulk of their applications are located in the cloud. Large organizations with multiple sites may have data centers and applications in branch offices as well as at headquarters. Or branch office staff may remotely access information www.TechnicalPDF.com in a centralized data center at headquarters or at a cloud provider's data center. Hyper cloud providers-the very largest providers; Amazon, Facebook, Google (part of Alphabet), and Microsoft have large data centers spread all over the world. As cloud computing proliferates, an increasing number of applications previously at enterprise data centers are now at hosting and cloud providers' data centers. According to a Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2017, online article, "A New Arms Race for Tech" combined capital expenditures at Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet's Google increased 22 percent in 2016 compared to 2015. Protecting Data Centers Cloud providers and social networks have multiple, duplicated large data centers dispersed around the world. Many of them are exact duplicates of each other in the event that one of their data centers is destroyed by a natural disaster or other disaster. As discussed in Chapter 1, duplicate data centers are for the most part connected by fiber-optic cabl