In a major competitive win, DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT) has signed an agreement with the State of Virginia’s economic development officials that gives major tax breaks to existing and future tenants of its massive data center campus in Ashburn.

Tax incentives are key differentiators for regions in attracting data center customers and operators in addition to energy rates and availability and presence of major network connectivity providers. Availability of incentives will often make or break a decision for a company to locate a data center in an area.

DFT president and CEO Hossein Fateh said the sales-tax exemption available to its tenants made Virginia once again an optimal location for companies to establish an East Coast data center presence.

“The significant sales tax relief that DFT and its tenants will receive lowers the total cost to our tenants of operating their data centers within DFT facilities located on our Ashburn Corporate Center,” he said.

In return for sales tax exemption on IT-equipment purchases, DFT has committed to invest US$150m in the location and create at least fifty jobs between July 2009 and June 2016. Investment made and jobs created by the wholesale data center provider’s tenants also count toward that goal.

DFT signed the agreement with the Virginia Economic Development Partnership as a memorandum of understanding.

The company’s Ashburn campus currently consists of five live data centers – more than 100MW of critical power total – and two development sites.

In May, the state’s lawmakers enacted a bill to extend temporary sales-tax exemptions for data center tenants that had been approaching expiration.