California firm leases data center space in Reston

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 part of space that owned and run by CoreSite, a information technology company that’s based in Denver.

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

“Data centers are choosing Fairfax County for great reasons — real estate availability, power availability, technical talent pipeline, 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 stable 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 at full build-out, according to the company.

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

Here’s more from WBJ on the lease:

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

Neither Backblaze nor CoreSite would disclose how much space Backblaze is occupying or any other terms of their agreement. Budman said only that the lease is a “multiyear” deal.

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

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

Photo via Jordan Harrison/Unsplash