Data Centers in Baltimore

Baltimore – Mid-Atlantic Connectivity Without The Premium

Executive Summary

Baltimore is a strategic data center market for organizations that require low-latency access to the Washington D.C. and Northern Virginia corridor without the associated high costs. Its robust fiber infrastructure provides a resilient, cost-effective alternative for production and disaster recovery workloads, directly protecting East Coast revenue streams.

Baltimore: At A Glance

Network & Connectivity Ecosystem

Baltimore provides a solid foundation for network-dependent applications, serving as a key secondary market to the primary connectivity hub in Ashburn, Virginia.

Carrier Density & Carrier Neutrality With over 10 network providers present in 15 data centers, the market offers healthy competition and diverse routing options, as of September 2025. Carrier-neutral facilities provide the primary access points for creating a resilient network architecture.

Direct Cloud On-Ramps As of September 2025, there are no direct public cloud on-ramps located within Baltimore city limits. Businesses achieve secure, high-performance cloud access through private network connections to the dense cloud ecosystem in nearby Ashburn, Virginia.

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) Public peering is limited within Baltimore itself. Most high-volume traffic exchange occurs through private network interconnects or via the massive peering exchanges in Ashburn.

Bare Metal Bare metal server capacity is available from multiple providers. This allows businesses to deploy dedicated, high-performance computing without the overhead of managing their own hardware. Options from providers like phoenixNAP and ColoCrossing are accessible.

Power Analysis

Average Cost Of Power Industrial electricity rates typically range from $0.09 to $0.12/kWh, as of September 2025. This pricing offers a competitive operational cost compared to more expensive northeastern markets. The grid mix is dominated by natural gas at approximately 60% and nuclear at 30%.

Power Grid Reliability The power grid serving Baltimore's data center corridors is well-engineered for uptime. Major facilities are supported by redundant power feeds from multiple utility substations, ensuring high levels of reliability for mission-critical operations.

Market Access, Business & Tax Climate

Proximity To Key Business Districts Data centers in the Baltimore area provide low-latency connectivity to the city's central business district, the growing technology sector, and numerous federal government agencies located within the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.

Regional Market Reach Baltimore is an excellent hub for reaching the dense Mid-Atlantic population, offering single-digit millisecond latency to Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and surrounding suburbs. This supports performance-sensitive applications for a significant portion of the U.S. East Coast.

Tax Advantage For Data Centers Maryland offers a significant financial incentive through its Data Center Sales & Use Tax Exemption program. This program exempts qualified facilities from paying the state's 6% sales tax on the purchase of data center equipment, directly reducing capital expenditures on new builds and technology refreshes.

Natural Disaster Risk

Baltimore has a High natural disaster risk profile, with a FEMA National Risk Index score of 93.67, as of September 2025. While the overall score is high, it reflects a concentration of specific, manageable threats rather than a broad vulnerability.

The primary risks for data center operations are related to severe weather events. Key hazards include hurricanes, coastal and riverine flooding, strong winds, and winter weather, including ice storms. Facility selection and hardening are critical to mitigate these regional risks.