Atlanta Data Center Market

Atlanta is the Internet Hub of the Southeast

Atlanta is one of the top data center markets in the United States and is the hub of internet traffic in the South Eastern US.

56 Marietta Street is Atlanta’s carrier hotel. Digital Realty has been operating the carrier hotel since it was acquired from Telx in 2015. It has the largest Peering Exchange in the region, Digital Realty Atlanta IX (formerly TIE-Atlanta.) The 21-story office building across the street, 55 Marietta, offers a carrier dense alternative to 56 Marietta.

Wholesale Options:

For almost a decade QTS owned the wholesale data center market in Atlanta with their 970,000 sqft building. Then other providers entered the market. Digital Realty now has 5 buildings, T5 is building their 2nd building. Ascent acquired the former Blackberry facility and launched in 2018, H5, and Server Farm all have wholesale space. In addition, there announced builds (described below) that will open up the supply.

Atlanta Colocation Providers

Digital Realty (5 sites), Equinix (5 sites), Edgeconnex, Coloblox, and Sungard are the top providers in Atlanta.

Electrical:

Industrial power rates for data centers in Atlanta region are approximately $0.05/kWh, which is considerably less than the national average. Georgia Power Company (GPC), an investor-owned electric utility, provides service to Atlanta. Greystone Power, a member-owned local cooperative, provides service to the Atlanta suburbs.

Announced Data Center Builds:

Atlanta has been a historically underserved market. That’s changing with an overwhelming number of data center announcements.

• CyrusOne plans to build a 50 MW campus
• Ascent recently open up the former Blackberry data center
• DataBank
• Switch plans to build a 1 million sqft campus
• Digital Realty is expanding 250 Williams with fiber back to 56 Marietta
• Lincoln Rackhouse
• DataSite
• Facebook - $750 million in Stanton springs
• T5 has announced a 2nd Atlanta site

Atlanta’s Data Center Clusters

• Alpharetta
• Downtown
• Suwanee/Norcross
• Lithia Springs

Hazard Risk

There is little risk of natural disasters in Atlanta. The city is far enough from the Atlantic coast that a hurricane would result in some flooding. That said, a snowstorm can paralyze the city for a couple of days.

Incentives

Since 2005, the State of Georgia has offered 100% sales tax exemptions on software, hardware and construction for data centers with minimum investments of $15 million per year. In addition, corporate income tax is based on sales within the state, and does not consider capital investments and payroll attributed to data center operations.