California firm leases data center space in Reston

The data center will occupy space on Sunrise Valley Drive (Photo via Jordan Harrison/Unsplash).

A West Coast company has officially leased data center space at 12100 Sunrise Valley Drive in Reston.

According to the Washington Business Journal, which first reported the deal, Backblaze, a San Mateo-based company, is occupying a portion of the space owned and operated by CoreSite, a Denver-based information technology company.

Victor Hoskins, president and CEO of the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, says the lease provides further “validation” that the county is a site of choice for strategic data center use.

“Data centers are choosing Fairfax County for great reasons – availability of real estate, availability of power, pipeline of technical talent, proximity to customers and our pro-business approach,” he told FFXnow. “The diversity of our business base, which includes data centers, is one of our greatest strengths and has a direct impact on our thriving and sustainable economy here in Fairfax County.”

CoreSite’s Reston data center is part of a campus with more than 1.3 million square feet of colocation space under full construction, according to the company.

The campus can reportedly provide access to “any cloud, network or managed service provider you need to support your digital transformation journey in the US and abroad.” It is being marketed as an attractive alternative to Ashburn with tax incentives and travel options.

Here’s more from WBJ on rent:

Backblaze began storing live customer data in the Reston data center on Dec. 7, said Gleb Budman, the company’s chairman, co-founder and CEO. He said in an interview that his company had been eyeing an expansion in Northern Virginia because “it’s often considered the heart of the Internet.”

Neither Backblaze nor CoreSite will disclose how much space Backblaze is taking up or any other terms of their agreement. Budman said only that the lease is a “multi-year” deal.

Backblaze typically uses third-party data centers and co-location facilities to store its customers’ information. One of its core services is allowing its customers to store data in one regional location and access it in another, and the Reston facility provides a closer option for Backblaze’s East Coast customers, as well as a repeat option for customers elsewhere, Budman said.

“When it’s full…we’ll have over an exabyte of customer data,” Budman said. (An exabyte equals one billion gigabytes. To put that in perspective, the average smartphone can store 64 gigabytes of data.)

Photo by Jordan Harrison/Unsplash