Data centers and the value of getting close to your customers

There is an old real estate adage that the three keys to a valuable property is location, location, location.

The saying apparently holds true for data centers and cloud computing as well.

Iron Mountain’s announcement this week that it was going to build a new data center campus in Prince William County, Va., is just the latest sign that the region close to the seat of federal power government is a hot bed for cloud computing facilities.

Iron Mountain already has a data center in Sterling, Va., in the bordering county of Loudon.

The company also said its federal business is one of its fastest growing, so being close to its government customers makes sense.

And, of course, Iron Mountain isn’t alone.

Prince William already has 13 data center facilities including Verizon Terremark and COPT Data Center Solutions.

Loudon County, Va., claims to have 60 data centers. And Fairfax County has another 43.

Granted, the federal government isn’t the only customer for these data centers. The data centers also are drawn to the region because of its electrical and communications grid. Local governments also compete fiercely for these facilities through a variety of incentives.

But after years of hype as the next big thing, cloud computing in the federal market has settled into being an accepted way of doing business. In fact, for new starts, it’s practically the default.

With that baseline, we should see more growth in cloud computing and more data centers being built at the doorstep of one of the biggest users of that technology.