Online service provider AOL has sold its 65-acre data centre site in Loudoun County, Virginia. The property was bought by New York-based developer company Sentinel Data Centers for $25.2 million (approx. £19 million).
The site is part of a 100-acre AOL campus which is being partly sold by Verizon. Sentinel expects to build up to three data centres within the facility across 2.8 million sq.ft, according to the Washington Business Journal.
Loudoun County is particularly attractive for data centres, with significant tax incentives and environmental suitability. With 70 facilities, it has emerged as a national data centre hub. Big players, such as Equinix, host their data centres in the area. Amazon subsidiary company Vadata Inc is also planning to build two warehouse-sized data centre buildings in the region.
According to the 2016 Northern Virginia Technology Council, Northern Virginia facilities help generate around $5.7 billion in economic activity each year, with this number expected to grow in the near future.
In June 2015, Verizon bought AOL for $4.4 billion. AOL now has 500 million customers monthly. A year later Verizon bought an additional ex-giant, Yahoo, for $4.8 billion. In 2017 both companies were merged under a parent company Oath Inc. The new brand includes more than 50 media and tech brands and focuses on delivering content and ads across mobile platforms.
CEO of Oath Inc Tim Armstrong said that by 2020 the company would try to reach 2 billion consumers, targeting between $10 billion and $20 billion in annual revenue.
Earlier this year, Verizon announced that it will begin offering Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) through Cisco’s Virtual Managed Services.
Through this development, Verizon will become the first global network to provide enterprise customers with a platform for Cisco’s Intelligent WAN service, which offers centralised management, rapid provisioning, and zero-touch automation.
