Seattle is home to several of the world’s largest tech companies and a swathe of startups developing cutting-edge software. Despite being established as a “superstar” city and technology hub, Seattle has often been overlooked as a data center hub in recent years, while other regional areas such as Portland’s Hillsboro cluster have received considerable national attention. Seattle offers extremely dense fiber throughout the urban core, new cable connectivity arriving soon in Asia, tax exemptions for data center investment, and renewable power to meet statewide carbon neutrality by 2030.
The original West Coast hub for data center development, Seattle offers dozens of networks throughout the downtown area, extending south to SeaTac airport and to key suburbs such as Tukwila. The city thus mirrors other core markets such as Atlanta or Chicago, with peering and other network-centric needs met downtown and larger hyperscale-type deployments located in more spacious suburban surroundings. International connectivity will be boosted shortly in 2024, with the JUNO cable scheduled to come online by the end of the year offering a direct link to Japan from the Seattle area. This new system will mirror the path taken by the Pacific Crossing-1 cable dating from the late 1990s and offer much-needed additional capacity for this important Pacific route.
While California and Oregon have yet to offer comprehensive state incentives for data center investment, the state of Washington has long maintained a program offering tax exemptions on equipment and power infrastructure once certain project sizes and hiring goals are met. This has spurred development in past years in both Seattle and more rural parts of the state, leading to a current local market size of over 100 megawatts in the greater Seattle area. Future data center projects throughout the state will also offer fully renewable power, thanks to the statewide Clean Energy Transformation Act from 2019 that pushes for carbon neutrality by the beginning of the next decade. Local utility Puget Sound Energy has committed to sourcing a mix of cleaner options by this date, with ongoing acquisitions expected across the next seven years.
A multifaceted market with a variety of deployment options, Seattle offers plenty of opportunity for growth for local and regional needs. As connectivity and power options shift, the city could regain prominence as a prime location for data center needs.
The EdgeConneX building in Seattle offers a secure, carrier-neutral environment for all deployments, with excellent access to downtown Seattle and beyond.
- Tier III design
- Nine miles from downtown Seattle
- 1.3 megawatts available now!
- Engineered for customers requiring the lowest possible latency
To learn more, visit: https://www.edgeconnex.com/locations/americas/seattle-wa/
To check out the data center details, download the EdgeConneX Seattle data sheet here: Seattle Datasheet
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To tour our Seattle location, please contact: info@edgeconnex.com