Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in the United States. This extremely mature and well-connected area traces its roots to the U.S. Government’s experiments in wide area fiber optic networking in the late 1960s. The low-latency connections to the national fiber network backbone along with a relatively business-friendly environment make Northern Virginia the top market for data centers serving the area’s biggest public and private enterprises.

While government agency requirements have increased the data center demand in Northern Virginia, the majority of the market is made up of other industries finding the market attractive. Hyperscale, aerospace, financial, managed hosting, technology, and telecommunications companies have all staked claims in Northern Virginia’s data centers. Colocation requirements in the Northern Virginia market are typically larger than most markets.