From its founding, Vantage Data Centers has kept a keen eye on Silicon Valley and its appetite for data center space. The company was founded in Santa Clara, and has been the most prolific developer in the market over the past eight years, creating 75 megawatts of mission-critical space.
Vantage has now begun the next chapter in its Silicon Valley story. The company recently began construction on its second major campus in Santa Clara, breaking ground on a 9-acre site on Mathew Street where it plans to build three data centers offering 69 megawatts of critical power. Vantage is underway on the first building, a 21 megawatt, 175,000 square foot data center that is expected to be completed in 2019.
“Silicon Valley remains an essential strategic market for our customers,” said Sureel Choksi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Vantage Data Centers. “As Vantage nears completion of its sixth and final data center on the existing 75MW Silicon Valley campus, we have initiated construction on our next 69MW campus to support the growth of enterprises, cloud and hyperscale customers in 2019 and beyond.”
New Supply for a Key Data Center Market
Silicon Valley is one of the largest and most important data center markets in the U.S., providing space for servers to deploy new hardware and services from the Valley’s marquee technology companies, as well as a legion of fast-moving startups.
Santa Clara has long been the Data Center Capital of Silicon Valley due to competitive power pricing from the municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power. That’s why there’s 35 data centers are located in a three-and-a-half square mile area within Santa Clara.
In recent years, the Silicon Valley market has experienced some growing pains. It continues to be a desirable site to deploy IT capacity, but growth is moderating due to challenges in site acquisition. Land is harder to find, and recent projects have featured properties with existing buildings that must be torn down and redeveloped.
Recognizing this challenge, the Vantage team spent several years scouting expansion sites in Santa Clara before announcing the new campus in 2016. Foundation work is underway at the Mathews campus, which will support three four-story data centers, adding more than 500,000 square feet of wholesale data center space.
The four-story design allows Vantage to make the most of its real estate, reflecting the trend in Santa Clara, where CoreSite recently completed a four-story facility and Vantage’s V5 is also four stories.
The campus will include best-in-class amenities, including a large footprint common area breakroom and relaxation center to ensure that customers are comfortable in the data center.
Sustainability Meets Efficiency
The new facility will contain several features designed to balance sustainability and low total cost of ownership (TCO). The new cooling system will use far less water than traditional systems, thanks to extensive use of recycled water and modular chiller and dry-cooler technology.
“Vantage’s dedication to sustainability, value and efficiency optimized for the wholesale environment is one of the reasons we’ve had such success in Silicon Valley,” said Vantage Chief Commercial Officer Lee Kestler. “We will continue that legacy of wholesale success and experience as we continue to grow into other strategic markets.”
Vantage Data Centers was founded in 2010 with backing from private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. The company acquired and redeveloped an Intel data center campus in Santa Clara. The company also operates a data center campus in Quincy, Washington. In early 2017, Digital Bridge Holdings acquired Vantage to serve as a platform for a larger expansion into the wholesale data center industry.
Vantage has recently broken ground on a $1 billion data center campus in Northern Virginia, where it plans to build more than 1 million square feet of data center space on 42 acres of land it recently acquired in Ashburn’s “Data Center Alley.” To support the construction costs in Silicon Valley and Northern Virginia, Vantage recently lined up $1.1 billion in financing using securitization financing, an approach that allows Vantage to pay lower interest rates on its debt, which reduces its costs as it seeks to compete in the industry’s largest markets.
Earlier this year Vantage said that it has leased 90 percent of the 9 megawatts of available space at its V6 facility in Santa Clara, which opened its doors in October. The company has signed three different deals to take up most of the space in the new building.
