[Infowarrior] - Secure Data Warehouses Rise Again in N. Virginia

[Richard Forno]

Secure Data Warehouses Rise Again in N. Virginia
Hit by Dot-Com Bust, Industry Is Reviving

By Kendra Marr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 15, 2007; D01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/14/AR2007101401
047_pf.html

They are among the most fortified institutions in greater Washington.
Personnel pass through "man traps," secure one-person entrances equipped
with biometric scanners that read fingerprints, palms or retinas.

What are they guarding?

Data.

Several projects are underway in Northern Virginia to build highly secure
data centers to protect the thousands of computer servers managing Internet
traffic and storing digital files, ranging from e-mail to sensitive
financial and medical information.

A growing appetite for Internet applications and a better understanding of
the vulnerabilities in such systems after Hurricane Katrina and the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has helped revive an industry that had
been hit hard by the dot-com bust.

"We've seen more activity in companies coming in and buying existing sites
and quite a bit of new construction than we've seen in a long time," said
Rich Miller, editor of Data Center Knowledge, an online trade publication.

Data-center construction accelerated this year, said John Kraft, chief
executive of ServerVault, a Dulles-based data-center manager.

Analysts estimate that there are now 15,000 to 20,000 data centers across
the country. One industry survey found that 80 percent of companies have
plans to expand their facilities.

It's unclear how long the boom will last. A slowing economy could temper
demand, as could rising power costs.

Data centers use an immense amount of electricity to run and cool rows of
servers. In 2006, U.S. data centers consumed 61 billion kilowatt hours of
electricity, at a cost of $4.5 billion, according to a recent Environmental
Protection Agency report. That's enough electricity to power 5.8 million
average American households in a year.

The recent construction activity is a turnaround of sorts.

During the dot-com boom, developers jumped into speculative data-center
development. They counted on dozens of Internet start-ups looking for a
place to park their data.

But many start-ups didn't last and the dot-com boom ended. So in Northern
Virginia, as well as around the country, data centers were shut down,
consolidated and used for office space, warehouses and industrial complexes.

"The demand for Internet services that drove the initial boom wasn't
incorrect, it was just a few years too early," Miller said.

Data centers do not come cheap. Last week, Savvis opened a $20 million
facility in Sterling, its third in the region.

A typical center costs $1,000 per square foot to develop -- double the price
in the dot-com era due to better, but costlier technology and security,
according to Miller.

Security measures account for much of the bill. The machines are locked in
cages and sealed behind firewalls. Banks of backup batteries and diesel
generators stand by to keep them humming in case of emergency.

The data centers are kept purposefully nondescript and outfitted with
security cameras, fake entrances, bulletproof glass and Kevlar-lined walls.
They include strategically placed hills and concrete posts designed to stop
charging vehicles filled with explosives.

"One freak attack on a data center would amount to critical data lost," said
Ted Chamberlin, principal analyst with research firm Gartner Inc. "It could
easily shut down a company."

Few jobs accompany these gigantic facilities. Data centers typically employ
only 10 to 30 people, depending on the size and services of the center. And
it can sometimes be difficult for economic development officials to get the
word out about new development, given security concerns.

"Some of these data centers have billions of dollars of transactions going
through them," said Dorri O'Brien Morin, a spokeswoman for the Loudoun
County Department of Economic Development. "They don't want people to know
where they are."