SoftLayer has achieved tremendous growth in the past year, particularly for a dedicated hosting company. This opening marks the third data center the company has opened in the last five months, including its Dallas, Texas facility which it opened in March.

"Now with three geographically diverse data centers, we will bring even more new services to our customers in the coming months," says Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. "As we searched for the best site for expanding our presence to the East Coast, the D.C. area was an easy choice. It has one of the highest concentrations of fiber connectivity in the US, providing us and our customers multiple network options and world class performance."

SoftLayer Washington D.C. is located seven miles from Dulles International Airport in a facility designed to full Tier IV standards. The facility features multiple redundant power connections in addition to the three 2-megawatt generators and eight, fully redundant, 750 kVA UPS systems.

Like SoftLayer's other data centers, the facility is backed by around the clock onsite support and multiple security protocols controlling entrance to the building. The facility also offers infrastructure features including 34 x 480v 3-Phase PDUs, redundant 30-ton CRAC Unit, FM-200 fire suppression system with VESDA, Biometric security system and digital security video surveillance.

SoftLayer has already begun pre-selling servers in the new data center to current customers, receiving an overwhelming level of demand resulting in a high backlog of server requests.

The Plano, Texas-headquartered SoftLayer says it offers web hosting and on-demand data center services on a global basis.