AiNET to open Data Center in Glen Burnie

March 23, 2012

By Adrian Maties, Associate Editor AiNet, the Beltsville-based IT solutions provider, announced on March 19 it is preparing to open a data center in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Called CyberNAP, the 300,000-square-foot facility will be housed in an existing building, the former [...]

By Adrian Maties, Associate Editor

AiNet, the Beltsville-based IT solutions provider, announced on March 19 it is preparing to open a data center in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Called CyberNAP, the 300,000-square-foot facility will be housed in an existing building, the former home to a Boscov’s department store. It will also be Maryland’s largest data center, rivaling the data center hotspot in Ashburn, Virginia.

The facility will be the size of six football fields, covering 15 acres. It is located just 11 miles north of Fort George G. Meade, home to the National Security Agency, the Defense Information Systems Agency and the relatively new U.S. Cyber Command. CyberNAP will be AiNET’s third data center in Maryland. The first two are in Beltsville and Laurel, Maryland.

AiNET paid nearly $1.6 million for the site. The facility is a three-story former department store attached to a suburban mall, with 20-foot ceilings on each floor. The building is able to support heavy floor loads. It will house over 10,000 equipment cabinets and support upwards of 1 million servers. The site will be power dense, supporting up to 25 kW per cabinet facility-wide. CyberNAP will offer high-security hosting space and 1,500 parking spaces will also be available.

AiNET is targeting both government and private companies and says it has already secured initial tenants for the data center. “We have commitments in place from several customers and carriers, and will be making announcements soon,” said Deepak Jain, president of AiNET, in a press statement.

AiNET plans to open the data center in July. When finished, CyberNAP is expected to create more than 2,500 jobs and $1 billion in annual economic activity. It will help Maryland emerge as a viable location for the data center industry, offering new options to the data center concentration in Northern Virginia.

AiNET was founded in 1993. It is a recognized leader in the design, construction, operation, and support of Internet data centers, optical fiber networks, and critical applications.