Qwest Buys Northern Virginia Data Center

Qwest Communications (Q) has acquired an existing data center in northern Virginia that will serve as the company's 17th CyberCenter hosting facility. Qwest bought the property in December, paying $29 million, according to the Loudoun Newsletter, which tracks commercial real estate in northern Virginia. The new facility is located near Qwest's two existing Cyber Centers in Sterling.

The expansion a response to "continued customer demand for hosting and cloud-based infrastructure services," according to Qwest. Buying an existing data center will allow Qwest to bring additional capacity online quicker than if it had built a new facility, especially when it comes to provisioning additional power. The facility, which had been operating as ITservercenter, is supporting one federal government customer.

"By leveraging the power of cloud computing, Qwest continues to demonstrate its ongoing success in serving enterprise and government customers nationwide," said Chris Ancell, executive vice president of Qwest Business Markets Group. "Our managed CyberCenters offer customers a compelling alternative to taking on the considerable risk and expense of building, maintaining and staffing their own facilities."

The new CyberCenter has existing raised-floor space, and Qwest will expand its footprint by building additional space in "pods" of between 6,000 and 16,000 square feet of space. The company will offer colocation, managed hosting and network services from the CyberCenter, including remote and on-site monitoring and management of more than 80 different types of applications, operating systems and databases.

Qwest operates 17 CyberCenters in 12 locations around the U.S., including Denver; Burbank, Sacramento and Sunnyvale, Calif.; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Minneapolis; Newark, N.J.; and Seattle in addition to its existing Sterling sites. The company opened new CyberCenter in Alburquerque in October.