Timmons speaks at a Port of Quincy event relating to data center tax breaks (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In a move that has been referred to alternately as “poaching,” “stealing” and “snagging,” Apple reportedly hired Microsoft’s data center general manager Kevin Timmons yesterday, to an unspecified position, though one generally expected to closely related to the company’s near-complete 500,000 square-foot data center in Maiden, North Carolina. In a post on his Green Data Center Blog, breaking the news that Timmons was leaving Microsoft for Apple , Dave Ohara observed that perhaps the most interesting point was the fact that the most scarce resource in the data center business was not power or cooling, but talent at the executive level. “It is such a small world in data centers and especially smaller for the executive rank,” wrote Ohara, “information flows as recruiters call and others want opinions on various candidates and companies to work for. Besides the executives, senior data center design engineers are heavily recruited.” Timmons leaves the same post at Microsoft that Data Center GM Mike Manos left several years ago to work at Digital Realty Trust