Microsoft announced a plan to reduce 5,000 positions in its first job cut in company history last week, and now says it is postponing construction on a planned data center in a suburb of Des Moines, Iowa. Microsoft said it will continue construction of its new data centers in Chicago and Dublin and open them based on the level of demand for its online services.

Arne Josefsberg, general manager of infrastructure services, and Michael Manos, general manager of data centers, said they expect more companies to rely on hosted services from companies such as Microsoft to save money.

Despite the economic downturn, they said Microsoft's online services businesses is expected to grow. Microsoft said in August that it would use the Iowa center to host consumer services such as Hotmail, Live Search and Windows Live applications. Google late last year also decided to delay building a data center facility it planned in Oklahoma.

For more on Microsoft's delayed plans:
- see this InfoWorld.com article

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