Morning all, it’s Taylor from Cold Isle, the 5-minute read that makes you smarter at data and the infrastructure that’s building the future.

• Digital Realty’s game-changing LC masterplan

• Data center tax incentives for 2023 and beyond ⚖️

• What you should be reading this morning

• Daily Dal-E🎨

Est. Read Time - 3 minutes, 34 seconds⏳️

How Digital Realty built its Loudon County Empire

Digital Realty scooped up its first data center properties in Northern Virginia in 2005, and as one of the most prominent players in the industry, they’ve been on an absolute tear ever since. They’ve acquired and developed their way to over 600MW under operation and have another 1000 currently being constructed

What‘s notable about DR’s steady ascension over the last two decades is the longevity they’ve been able to achieve from older properties. Their original acquisitions are still in operation and, in fact, the first customer they put into that campus is still being served today.
Data Center Dynamics spoke with Ruch Becher, design manager at Digital Realty about how they’ve achieved this continuity of operation. He stresses that the key is in the modularity of the components and features of the data centers that are susceptible to age. Investing in modular technologies that can be replaced easily has allowed the company to grow seamlessly.

An interesting aspect of the decades-long growth of DR’s Loudon County campus (nicknamed Digital Dulles) is noticing the design and construction trends through time. Over the course of the last 20 years, the projects have grown in size of course, but also in aesthetics, with local municipalities having more input on the appearance of these behemoth structures. With more windows and exterior design flourishes, the new data centers are a far cry from their cement shells of the early 2000’s!

With just 575 acres left to develop, Digital Realty’s expansion in Loudon County is probably nearing its end. Like other data center companies in the area, DR is meeting the hard truth that there is just no more land left to develop. But the team at Digital Realty hopes that its Digital Dulles can be seen as an industry benchmark on how to develop digital infrastructure that’s current and relevant over time.

Other Good Stuff…

Here’s a look at what the tax incentive landscape looks like for 2023. The new tax incentives are focused on job creation and development. Like Maryland’s NC’s and Loudon’s which offer developers of data centers tax free purchases of dc equipment. How are these changing? They’re not, really. But as we’ve seen over the last few years, a weariness towards data center development from local governments and municipalities continues to settle in.
There’s no indication that tax breaks are on the wane, but increased scrutiny of power and water usage continues to be top of mind for regulators.

MC Magazine’s cyber security feature is… unconventional? As the value of data increases, each year we see a new record in ransomware attacks. The worldwide average of a data breach was $4.35 million last year! In this write-up for MC, Candida Valois from Scality describes how a change in data delivery can help protect enterprises against attacks. She says object storage as opposed to traditional block storage is the solution we need. Check this one out if IT security is your thing.

Great Southern Bank updates networking to win the banking wars. ⚔️ It’s a Cisco write-up of its own product, but showcases a cool way an Australian bank reworked its network delivery system to gain a competitive edge in the banking sector.

Here’s What Else you Should be Reading

• 5G and the edge (for networking nerds only!) 

• Blockchain in the telecom market Poised to hit $80 Billion in the next 10 years. (That’s 75% growth every year)

• Data Center Microgrids the future or full of it? Webinar series about microgrids. I think we’ll do a full write up of microgrids soon.

• Network edge data centers This is sort of a lightweight article from Schneider, but a good primer for those not familiar with its terms.

• A look inside Amazon’s Data Centers Pulling the curtain back on some of the infrastructure driving Amazon and AWS.

• Improving Data Centre Construction (Podcast) If you’re in the industry and don’t already listen to Andy’s podcast, Inside Data Centre, then you should start.

Daily Dal-E

According to our AI god’s this is what an ancient data center would like like if it were underwater in some sort of Atlantis lost city situation.