Boston is a data center market that traditionally attracts regional users because of the attributes of the city. Boston is attractive to companies because it's one of the largest cities in the Northeast and has the ninth largest economy in the US, which creates a geographic area with a competitive colocation market. Boston is situated within 500 miles of major areas like New York, Northern New Jersey, Northern Virginia, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Montreal, and is a termination point for an undersea cable running directly to the UK and Ireland. Boston also has a highly diverse and healthy economy, with twelve Fortune 500 companies headquartered there, and an unemployment rate below the national average. Influential educational institutions like MIT and Harvard have also helped Boston become one of the world’s leading cities in biotech research.

Data center development in Boston occurs in both the downtown area and outer suburbs of the city, a trend found in other US data center markets as well. Because downtown areas are typically rich in both power and fiber infrastructure, certain buildings in these areas offer shell lease opportunities for datacenter providers and users. Downtown Boston is home to Markley’s massive carrier hotel, a 920,000 sf building offering both colocation and cloud. This building also provides access to over 80 network providers and the Boston Internet Exchange. Cogent, CoreSite, and INAP all operate facilities located on Innerbelt Road, which is in close proximity to the downtown area as well. Providers like Digital Realty and CenturyLink are located further out in the surrounding suburbs, primarily in Waltham, Needham, and Burlington. Digital Realty is the largest data center operator in Boston, with 20 MW of commissioned power spread across the three facilities they own in the Boston market.