Sears Repurposing Waning Auto Centers Into Bustling Data Centers

The years haven't been kind to brick-and-mortar generalist stores. Kmart, Sears, Roses -- just a few of the names that were booming a decade ago, and now, can't seem to lure a customer in regardless of tactic. Rather than just throwing in the towel and cursing Amazon, Sears is thinking outside of the box a bit. A new report suggests that Sears Auto Center locations may re-invent themselves for the digital generation by converting into data centers.


With cloud services on the rise, monolithic companies such as Google and Apple have been building data centers all over the place in order to house and manage the incredible amount of information now being tapped by their customer bases. Ubiquity Critical Environments, the data center unit of Sears Holdings, is reportedly mulling the idea of converting some Auto Center locations into homes for bits and bytes.

If successful, it would enable Sears to extract revenue from its valuable real estate without having to simply sell it off. It would create a revenue stream where there currently isn't much of one. Of course, the proposal still has a long way to go before it's finalized and agreed upon, but it's great to see the company thinking about such positive options. Who knows -- your next cloud-based save may end up in a former garage. How's that for getting with the program?