NTT Global Data Centers Plans Massive New Campus in Northern Virginia

NTT Global Data Centers is expanding its presence in Northern Virginia with a massive new campus in Prince William County, the company said today. NTT has acquired property from Lerner Enterprises in Gainesville, Va. where it plans to develop 2 million square feet of data center space, supporting 336 megawatts (MWs) of capacity.

The 103-acre campus will provide room for long-term growth for NTT and its customers in Northern Virginia, where the company already operates a major campus in “Data Center Alley” in Ashburn, the primary cloud hub in Loudoun County.

NTT says the Gainesville project will become its single largest campus, with plans for four two-story data center buildings, with the first scheduled to come online in the second quarter of 2024.  The design will also offer “dedicated self-contained areas for large-footprint deployments” to support hyperscale clients.

“The development of a new data center campus in Virginia is testament to our huge growth and momentum across North America” said Doug Adams, President and CEO at NTT Global Data Centers Americas. “This strategic purchase of land is just one of the many steps we’re taking to accelerate our data center footprint across the country.”

NTT Global Data Centers Americas is in the midst of a major expansion, with construction projects underway across the U.S. to add more capacity. The company has spent the past two years entering new markets, opening data center campuses in Hillsboro, Chicago, Santa Clara and Phoenix.

“The development of our new campus in Virginia will be one of 14 ongoing projects taking place across the globe,” said Masaaki Moribayashi, President and Board Director, NTT Ltd. “By 2025, it is estimated that 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms, up from 30% in 2021. As a result, the demand for data centers to support this shift has never been higher. As one of the largest data center providers in the world, NTT is well placed to support this reliance, and we’re focused on supporting our customers as their needs continue to change,”

Data Center Developers Look Beyond Ashburn

Northern Virginia has become the global capital for cloud computing, and is home to hundreds of data centers. That includes many hyperscale facilities operated by Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Meta, as well as data center developers who support their growth.

Data center development in Prince William County has accelerated in recent years as development parcels grow scarce near the regional data center hub in Ashburn in Loudoun County. There is now a growing cloud cluster near Manassas, and land speculation from developers has boosted property values, with recent transactions valuing data center development sites at nearly $1 million an acre.

There is now an estimated 5.3 million square feet of data center space in Prince William County, with another 8 million to 10 million square feet in the development pipeline, according to a recent report.

The NTT project is part of a data center building boom in Gainesville around the intersection of Route 66 and 29 (Lee Highway). The NTT property is across the highway from Gainesville Crossing, a large campus from Corscale that will feature 2.3 million square feet of data center space and 306MW of utility power.

Both projects are west of the proposed Prince William Digital Gateway, which could add millions of addition square feet of data centers and has generated lively debate about the appropriate location for future development in the county.

NTT Accelerates Global Data Center Expansion

The Gainesville campus is part of an ongoing global expansion for NTT, which plans to increase its data center footprint to more than 1,000 MWs in 20 countries by the end of 2022. NTT says its data centers in Prince William will be sustainable, as part of the company’s commitment to achieving net-zero emissions across its data center operations by 2030.

In addition to its U.S. campuses, NTT Global Data Centers recently announced the opening of data centers in Madrid, Navi Mumbai in India, and its largest data center in Indonesia in Jakarta. NTT Global Data Centers also has ongoing construction that will deliver new data centers in Germany, India, and Johannesburg later this year.

In the U.S., each campus is designed for multiple data centers, which allows customers who want contiguous space to easily add capacity in adjacent data halls or buildings. Here’s a look at the company’s US footprint:

• Hillsboro, Oregon: A 47-acre campus will support 5 buildings, SF and 126 MW of capacity.
• Phoenix: A 102-acre campus in Mesa with room for 7 buildings spanning 1.5 million SF and 240 MW of data center capacity.
• Ashburn: The newest campus supports 7 data centers and 224 MWs of capacity.
• Dallas: 42 acres in Garland, with room for 5 buildings and 1 million SF and at least 80 MWs of capacity.
• Chicago: A 19-acre campus in Itasca supports two 36-megawatt buildings.
• Silicon Valley: A 16 MW data center in Santa Clara.

In 2018 NTT Global (then known as RagingWire) launched its primary campus in Data Center Alley in Ashburn, shifting to greenfield construction, customized from the ground up to support the company’s vision for Internet-scale campuses.

The first building, VA3, is a 16 MW data center featuring a mix of vault designs from 2 megawatts to 6 megawatts of power capacity, as well as a large room for multi-tenant retail colocation. VA4 and VA5 are 32-megawatt buildings with expanded and standardized vaults, and VA6 will feature NTT’s new 36-megawatt design – two floors, with three 6-megawatt data halls on each floor.

At least three more data center buildings are planned for the Ashburn campus, totaling 224 megawatts of capacity. The Prince William campus will be 50 percent larger, providing a next phase of growth for NTT and its clients from 2024 forward.

Having capacity can provide an advantage, especially as customers seek accelerated delivery timelines to meet demand for cloud services.

“One of the things our client base has told us that they appreciate how we build ahead in our markets,” said Adams in a recent conversation with DCF.