Dulles Technology Corridor

The Dulles Technology Corridor is a business cluster containing many defense and technology companies, located in Northern Virginia near Washington Dulles International Airport. The area was called "The Silicon Valley of the East" by Atlantic magazine.^[1] It was dubbed the "Netplex" in a 1993 article by Fortune magazine. Another article in 2000 claimed that the area contained "vital electronic pathways that carry more than half of all traffic on the Internet. The region is home to more telecom and satellite companies than any other place on earth."^[2]

The Dulles Technology Corridor is a descriptive term for a string of communities that lie along and between Virginia State Route 267 (the Dulles Toll Road and Dulles Greenway), and Virginia State Route 7 (Leesburg Pike and Harry Byrd Highway). It especially includes the communities, from east to west, of Tysons Corner, Reston, Herndon, Sterling, and Ashburn. These communities are in Fairfax and Loudoun counties, which are the second-highest and highest income counties in the U.S. as of 2011, coinciding with the national technology and local internet boom of the 1990s and local technology spending after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Internet infrastructure and data centers

As of 2009, more than 50% of all U.S. Internet traffic travelled through Northern Virginia.^[3] In his book Tubes, author Andrew Blum calls Ashburn, Virginia—a community within the Dulles Technology Corridor—"the bullseye of America's Internet."^[4] The Dulles Technology Corridor serves as headquarters for domain name registrar Network Solutions and network infrastructure company Verisign. The region contains the Internet Society, and used to contain the mainframe that houses the master list of all Internet domain names.

The Dulles Technology Corridor includes Ashburn, Virginia's "Data Center Alley,"^[5] described by the Washington Business Journal as "an area that is quickly emerging as a national hub for data storage facilities."^[6] The corridor also has data centers in Sterling, Herndon, Reston, and Tysons Corner. The area is a growing home for major data centers including those of Amazon Web Services (AWS)'s US East region, where an estimated 70% of AWS IP addresses are housed.^[7] Wikimedia Foundation has its primary data center in the corridor.^[8] According to U.S. News & World Report, "Northern Virginia remains popular, in part because it has some of the country's cheapest electricity rates."^[3] According to Data Center Map, Northern Virginia is home to more than 300 data centers.^[9]

Business environment

The Dulles Technology Corridor has access to a highly educated workforce. Of adults aged 25 and over, 58.2% in Fairfax County^[10] and 57.6% in Loudoun County^[11] have a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 28.2% for the U.S. as a whole.^[12]

The George Washington University's Virginia Science and Technology Campus and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Farm Research Campus are located in the corridor.

Company headquarters

The following companies are headquartered in the Dulles Technology Corridor:

Aerovironment
Amazon (Amazon has two headquarters, the other being in Seattle, WA)
Alarm.com
Appian Corporation
Boeing
Booz Allen Hamilton
CACI
Capital One
Carahsoft
DXC Technology
DLT Solutions
DynCorp
ePlus^[13]
General Dynamics
GeoEye
Freddie Mac
ICF International
ID.me
Iridium Communications
ITT Exelis
Leidos
Mandiant
ManTech
MicroStrategy
Mitre Corporation
Network Solutions
NeuStar
Northrop Grumman
Orbital ATK
Peraton
Raytheon
SAIC
The Sovereign Group
VeriSign
Volkswagen
X-Mode social
XO Communications

Regional offices

The following companies have major regional offices located in the Dulles Technology Corridor:

References

^ Derek Thompson (June 7, 2011). "'The Silicon Valley of the East' Is Washington, D.C." The Atlantic. Retrieved December 13, 2014.
^ Donnelly, Sally B.; Zagorin, Adam (August 14, 2000), "D.C. Dotcom", Time, archived from the original on October 1, 2007, retrieved 2012-10-12
^ ^a ^b Kent Garber (March 24, 2009). "The Internet's Hidden Energy Hogs: Data Servers". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
^ ^a ^b Andrew Blum (Jan 16, 2013). "The Bullseye of America's Internet". Gizmodo. Retrieved February 23, 2014.
^ Rich Miller (August 28, 2011). "WashPost Profiles Ashburn 'Data Center Alley'". Data Center Knowledge. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
^ Daniel J. Sernovitz (December 2, 2011). "Equinix plotting massive Ashburn data complex". Washington Business Journal. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
^ Rich Miller (January 15, 2013). "Amazon Adding Cloud Capacity in Northern Virginia". Data Center Knowledge. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
^ Guillaume Paumier (January 19, 2013). "Wikimedia sites to move to primary data center in Ashburn, Virginia". Wikimedia.
^ "Data Center Alley & Northern Virginia - The World's Densest Data Center Hub". www.datacentermap.com. Retrieved 2024-06-09.
^ "Fairfax County, Virginia". State & County QuickFacts. United States Census Bureau. January 10, 2013. Archived from the original on July 13, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
^ "Loudoun County, Virginia". State & County QuickFacts. United States Census Bureau. January 10, 2013. Archived from the original on July 28, 2011. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
^ "USA". State & County QuickFacts. United States Census Bureau. January 10, 2013. Archived from the original on March 10, 2001. Retrieved February 15, 2013.
^ "Locations".