Seventy percent of the world's internet traffic goes through Ashburn, Virginia. That fact has led to the growth of over five hundred data centers in Northern Virginia. Today, we sat down with one of those companies to examine its data centers and its relationship with the federal government.
John Reynolds is the Director of QTS Federal. He has decades of experience in federal technology and provides the listener with an overview of QTS's origins, its values, and recent growth.
He views the data center business as a real estate endeavor. Land is acquired, a facility is constructed, and it has occupants. A company like Amazon Web Services have their dedicated data centers; QTS can house several different customers. We do not know the specific names; we can assume they are as large as Facebook and encompass federal agencies of all types.
Facebook may require one set of standards when it comes to security, and the NIST provides guidelines for federal data protection, which QTS includes as part of its compliance. The company participates in the community and understands the impact of energy requirements and cooling for local communities.
John Reynolds highlights the importance of resilience with multi-layered power redundancy and advanced energy contracts. QTS is also expanding into Europe and exploring alternative power sources due to grid limitations.
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