LEED is a rating system for green building developed by the USGBC and is a benchmark nationally recognized for design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.

The LEED system awards points for membership of certain green criteria to address human health and the environment, including sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality and innovation and design.

The Council is working on updating its classification system of the building, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, to deal with data center developers and specific design considerations, particularly in relation to energy efficiency.

Besides being LEED certified Gold, Ashburn data center achieved SAS 70 Type II as a condition of October, and has the topology of the infrastructure in accordance with the classification criteria and Uptime Institute Level III performance standard.

The company has been rapidly expanding its data center footprint in the last few months, the addition of two data centers in the Silicon Valley area – one in San Jose and Santa Clara.

“We are proud to announce the gold LEED certification of our facilities Ashburn,” says Tarif Abboushi, vice president of data center infrastructure of NTT America. “Certification allows us to provide our clients access to a state of the art green facility. The certification also demonstrates our commitment to environmental management and represents significant progress against the objectives of our Company Green Initiative.

Certification is only part of the green approach NTT America’s global accommodation. The company offers balanced accommodation of carbon, a carbon offset program that enables customers to offset the carbon footprint of their IT equipment by purchasing credits and uses energy-efficient servers and more efficient flow air in data centers, expand alternative power sources, is involved in recycling company worldwide, and subsidized public transportation and telecommuting.