With businesses keeping working from home in place even as the COVID-19 pandemic retreats in the US, Comcast Business has unveiled plans to invest in data centres in the Washington State to sustain demand from enterprises and remote working.

The investment will be done in partnership with privately owned Sabey Data Centers and plans to bring improved IT continuity and connectivity to businesses.

Comcast Business will integrate its connectivity into data centres located in Tukwila and Quincy, giving businesses a private connection to regional Sabey data centres.

The two parties said the collaboration will also help advance digital transformation initiatives and enable Washington state businesses to better support their employees working remotely.

Washington is currently experiencing rapid growth across its data centre market. To that extent, Sabey Data Centers has brought onlien a combined 2.2 million square feet of data centre space throughout the state.

John Ford, VP and general manager for Sabey Data Centers, Seattle, said: “CIOs and IT decision makers are often challenged with managing connections to multiple data centres and cloud solutions, managing application performance as well as troubleshooting latency and throughput issues from their data centre connections.

“Comcast Business’ data centre connectivity helps our customers simplify their workloads by providing direct access on a network that can be tied to a business’s physical location – this means great performance, reliability, and scalability, and ultimately greater network agility for businesses.”

By integrating Comcast Business’ Hybrid Fiber Coax (HFC) system, Sabey Data Center customers will be able to take advantage of high network availability.

Comcast Business has also built diverse 100 Gbps connections through separate network locations in its HFC system, so if there is an outage along one path, alternative paths are available for backup connectivity and support so Sabey customers can stay online.

As part of the partnership, Comcast Business will also offer Sabey customers an “on-ramp” to popular cloud services like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud via the Comcast Business Direct-to-Cloud platform, which connects customers to the cloud without going through the Internet.

Scott Woodard, director of sales engineering for Comcast Business’ WA Region, said: “Comcast Business is focused on empowering businesses with a choice in hybrid IT solutions and massive Ethernet network reach.

“Our goal is to connect data centres and cloud services to more than one million Ethernet-enabled buildings and businesses nationwide.”

In addition, businesses already using Comcast Business Ethernet and IP services will have efficient and secure access to Sabey’s data centers. Plus, workers with Xfinity internet who need to remotely access information or upload files will be able to send their information through Comcast’s statewide network.

Rob Brenner, Vice President of Comcast Business for Comcast’s  Washington Region, added: “We have already seen that the demand for digital transformation has the power to completely revolutionise how a business operates.

“As a provider of comprehensive technology solutions for businesses, we are thrilled to partner with the Sabey Data Centers to help local businesses in Washington transform their backend operations and modernize in anticipation of a data-driven future of work.”