science

Quality Technology Services

Quality Technology Services is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Quality Technology Services rather than just read about it. In short: Quality Technology Services (QTS or QTS Data Centers) is an American provider of carrier-neutral data centers and provides colocation services within North America and the Netherlands and is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. The company's largest operating areas are: Northern Virginia, Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago, Hillsboro, Oregon and New Jersey in the United States and United Kingdom, the Netherlands in Europ…

Key takeaways

Quality Technology Services belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Quality Technology Services to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Quality Technology Services from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Quality Technology Services (QTS or QTS Data Centers) is an American provider of carrier-neutral data centers and provides colocation services within North America and the Netherlands and is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. The company's largest operating areas are: Northern Virginia, Dallas/Fort Worth, Chicago, Hillsboro, Oregon and New Jersey in the United States and United Kingdom, the Netherlands in Europe. In 2019 and 2020 the company was named the most sustainable company in the data center industry for two years in a row by World Finance Magazine. The company is also a member of the RE100, a global corporate leadership initiative bringing together influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity. On August 31, 2021, QTS announced that companies affiliated with the Blackstone Group had completed the acquisition of the company for approximately $10 billion.

History

Timeline In 2003, Chad Williams founded the company with the purchase of a data center in Kansas. In October 2005, the company acquired Deltacom's e^deltacom business unit and its data center in Suwanee, Georgia for $26 million. In October 2006, the company acquired a 960,000 square foot data center in Atlanta as well as Globix Hosting LLC for a total of $161 million. The company also acquired NTT USA LLC, which owned a 130,000 square foot facility in the New York City area. In December 2007, the company acquired the customers of First National Technology Solutions. The company also acquired 120,000 square feet of data center and office technology space in Silicon Valley. In April 2008, the company expanded into Florida. In 2010, the company acquired the former Qimonda semiconductor site in Richmond, Virginia and converted the property into a 1.3 million square foot mega data center. The MAREA and BRUSA subsea cable systems operated by Telxius terminate in this facility, forming the QTS Richmond Network Access Point. The QTS Richmond Network Access Point or the NAP was co-founded by Clint Heiden, former Chief Revenue Officer of QTS and Vinay Nagpal, President of InterGlobix, LLC. In 2011, the company acquired a data center in Lenexa, Kansas. In January 2013, the company acquired Herakles LLC and its 92,000 square-foot data center in San Francisco. In February that same year the company acquired 40 acres in Irving, Texas for construction of a data center facility. In October, the company became a public company via an initial public offering. In April 2014, the company acquired the former Chicago Sun-Times plant with plans to convert it into a data center. In June 2015, the company acquired Carpathia Hosting for $326 million. In June 2016, the company acquired a data center campus in New Jersey from DuPont Fabros Technology for $125 million. In January 2017, the company acquired a 260,000 square foot data center in Irving, Texas for $50 million. In May 2017, the company acquired a 3.4-acre parcel next to its Atlanta facility for $1 million. In April 2019, the company acquired 2 data centers in the Netherlands (Groningen and Eemshaven) for $44 million. In November 2019, the company announced the expansion of its Atlanta data center campus, totaling more than 250,000 square feet of leasable capacity. Development finished in 2020. In 2020, the company expanded its commitment to environmental sustainability by partnering with American Forests and World Vision. The company also started development on its greenfield data center campus in Hillsboro, Oregon with completion in 2021. The data center facility is run entirely with renewable energy. In 2021, the company announced a total of eight data center facilities utilizing renewable energy to power operations. In April 2025, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman Chad Williams decided to step down and return to his position as CEO of Quality Group of Companies (QGC), a diversified real estate and business services family office investment company from which QTS was originally founded. Current QTS executives, David Robey, Chief Operating Officer and Tag Greason, Chief Growth Officer, have been appointed Co-CEOs. In 2025 the company announced the plan for a new data center in the United Kingdom in Cambois. The data center will finish its first phase of construction in 2026 and will fully constructed by 2035.

Acquisitions and expansions In 2021, Blackstone Group Inc.'s infrastructure unit, Blackstone Infrastructure Partners and its nontraded real-estate investment trust, known as BREIT, have agreed to pay $78 a share for QTS. The acquisition was completed on August 31, 2021.

Concerns over water usage

In 2025, a QTS data center in Fayetteville, Georgia drained around 30 million gallons of water through water connections that were not disclosed to Fayette County, with QTS having to pay $150,000 in retroactive fees. The unregistered connections were discovered following an investigation after residents complained of low water pressure. The incident prompted community outrage; residents had already been instructed by Fayette County to limit water consumption during drought conditions in Georgia at the time.

Data center locations QTS operates 28 data center locations across the United States and Netherlands in the following areas:

United States Arizona California Florida Georgia Illinois Kansas New Jersey Oregon Texas Virginia Ohio Colorado Iowa South Carolina Utah

Netherlands Eemshaven Groningen

United Kingdom Cambois, Northumberland (First phase will be completed in 2026)

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Quality Technology Services

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Quality Technology Services claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Quality Technology Services before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Quality Technology Services ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Quality Technology Services

In research: Quality Technology Services appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Quality Technology Services in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Quality Technology Services is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2003 establishments in Kansas, 2013 initial public offerings, 2021 mergers and acquisitions, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Quality Technology Services outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Quality Technology Services in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Quality Technology Services means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Quality Technology Services out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Quality Technology Services in simple terms?

Why does Quality Technology Services matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Quality Technology Services?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Quality Technology Services.