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Secure Data Warehouses Rise Again in N. Virginia
Don Teague, vice president of Savvis Federal Systems, in one of the company's centers. Savvis just opened a new facility in Sterling.
(By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)
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But many start-ups didn't last and the dot-com boom ended. So in Northern Virginia, as well as around the country, data centers were shut down, consolidated and used for office space, warehouses and industrial complexes.
"The demand for Internet services that drove the initial boom wasn't incorrect, it was just a few years too early," Miller said.
Data centers do not come cheap. Last week, Savvis opened a $20 million facility in Sterling, its third in the region.
A typical center costs $1,000 per square foot to develop -- double the price in the dot-com era due to better, but costlier technology and security, according to Miller.
Security measures account for much of the bill. The machines are locked in cages and sealed behind firewalls. Banks of backup batteries and diesel generators stand by to keep them humming in case of emergency.
The data centers are kept purposefully nondescript and outfitted with security cameras, fake entrances, bulletproof glass and Kevlar-lined walls. They include strategically placed hills and concrete posts designed to stop charging vehicles filled with explosives.
"One freak attack on a data center would amount to critical data lost," said Ted Chamberlin, principal analyst with research firm Gartner Inc. "It could easily shut down a company."
Few jobs accompany these gigantic facilities. Data centers typically employ only 10 to 30 people, depending on the size and services of the center. And it can sometimes be difficult for economic development officials to get the word out about new development, given security concerns.
"Some of these data centers have billions of dollars of transactions going through them," said Dorri O'Brien Morin, a spokeswoman for the Loudoun County Department of Economic Development. "They don't want people to know where they are."
