WASHINGTON — NTT Communications‘ data center subsidiary RagingWire will invest $160 million in a new data center in Ashburn, Virginia — its third data center campus in the Ashburn area.
Called VA3, the new data center will be phase one of RagingWire’s new Ashburn campus development, that will accommodate six buildings on a 76.5-acre site. Phase one will include a 245,000-square-foot secured data center with 16 megawatts of available power.
RagingWire says the campus, at the intersection of Waxpool Road and Farmwell Road, will open by the end of 2017.
“Virginia is the top data center market in the world and a strategic location for NTT Com as we expand our data center capacity,” said Tetsuya Shoji, president and CEO of NTT Communications.
NTT Com, based in Japan, has more than 140 data centers globally.
Combined with RagingWire’s two other Ashburn data centers, the third facility will bring its total data center space to more than 500,000 square feet.
RagingWire currently has 1.2 million square feet of U.S. data center space, with other locations in Northern California and Dallas.
Data center demand in Northern Virginia has soared in the last decade, driven by tax incentives, geographic location and by cheap electric rates.
“Virginia is a cost-effective power provider, and given the significant amount of power enterprise users require, this is a significant benefit,” commercial real estate firm JLL’s Allen Tucker tells WTOP.
Other data centers coming online in Northern Virginia include Sabey Data’s first building with 140,000 square feet, and DuPont Fabros Technology. With several Northern Virginia data centers already, DuPont Fabros Technology will open another 326,000-square-foot facility next year.
American Real Estate Partners and Davidson Kemper, which recently acquired the 126-acre former MCI campus in Northern Virginia for $212 million, say they have received significant interest from data center operators for the space.
As of last quarter, there was 11 million square feet of data center space in Northern Virginia — most of it in Loudoun County, and another 4 million square feet either under construction or planned.
