WASHINGTON — When you think of the cloud, think of Northern Virginia. The region leads the nation in square footage of data centers, and demand is soaring.
Real estate firm JLL says the data center market in Northern Virginia is expected to exceed last year’s demand by more than 30 percent. There are several reasons that Northern Virginia has become ground zero for the nation’s data centers.
“One, the explosive growth of the cloud. Two would be the low cost of power. Dominion Virginia Power just rolled back their power cost to 5.2 cents per kilowatt hour, and the explosive growth of new subsea cables coming into Virginia Beach that are going to connect Virginia to Spain, Brazil and South Africa,” said Allen Tucker, managing director of the Mid-Atlantic data center solutions practice at JLL.
Virginia also recently extended its package of incentives for data center construction in the commonwealth.
There is now 11 million square feet of data center space in Northern Virginia, most of it in Loudoun County, with another 4 million square feet either under construction or planned.
Data centers also must place security at the top of the list when designing and building.
“It is predicated on whether it’s a government requirement or a corporate enterprise, but they are all hardened facilities. They are all purpose-built facilities for mission-critical data centers,” Allen said.
Northern Virginia’s data center customers include the Federal Reserve and the United States Government, the largest content generator in the world.
Data centers also have some of the best-paying IT jobs in the Washington region.
The cloud managed service sector is expected to double in the next five years.
