Atlanta Technical College cut the ribbon May 20 on a new Microsoft Datacenter Academy lab facility, giving South Atlanta one of Georgia’s first technical training academies focused specifically on data center careers.
The facility, located on ATC’s campus, was developed through a collaboration among Atlanta Technical College, Microsoft, TA Realty, and TA Realty’s data center development arm, TA Digital Group. ATC says the academy is backed by more than $800,000 in funding through the Atlanta Technical College Foundation and industry partners, and will welcome its first students this fall.
The academy will train students for roles in data center operations, networking, cybersecurity, and energy management — the less visible but increasingly critical workforce behind the AI and cloud infrastructure boom.
That workforce story matters in Atlanta right now. According to CBRE’s latest North America Data Center Trends report, Atlanta ended 2025 with 1,459.2 megawatts of total data center inventory, making it the second-largest data center market in the country behind Northern Virginia. CBRE also reported 2,076 megawatts under construction in Atlanta and more than 10 gigawatts of future data center growth capacity enabled across Georgia.
In other words: Georgia is not just trying to attract tech jobs in software, startups, and corporate innovation. It is becoming one of the country’s major digital-infrastructure markets. The labor pipeline has to catch up.
“The future of digital infrastructure does not begin in a server room. It begins in a classroom,” ATC President Dr. Victoria Seals said during the announcement. Seals framed the academy as a way to make sure students gain the skills and access needed to participate in one of the world’s fastest-growing technical industries.
The Microsoft Datacenter Academy at Atlanta Technical College is part of Microsoft’s global Datacenter Academy network, which now includes more than 30 education partners worldwide. Microsoft lists Atlanta Technical College among its North American Datacenter Academy partners, with associated coursework in computer concepts, hardware installation and maintenance, information security, A+ preparation, and computer networking fundamentals.
The program is built around five pillars: curriculum alignment, scholarships and financial aid, mentorship, simulation labs, and work experience. Microsoft scholarship support can cover tuition, books, fees, and certification testing costs, according to ATC.
Bowen Wallace, corporate vice president for Microsoft Americas, said the new simulation lab gives students hands-on access to equipment and servers and is intended to strengthen the local talent pipeline for cloud infrastructure careers.
The location is also significant. ATC sits on Metropolitan Parkway in South Atlanta, not in the north-metro corporate corridors that still dominate much of Atlanta’s technology employment map. Microsoft’s Georgia data center region includes a presence in Fulton and Douglas counties, and Microsoft has publicly tied its local data center strategy to workforce and community investment.
That makes the ATC academy more than a campus workforce program. It is part of the broader negotiation around Georgia’s data center boom: how much of the value created by AI infrastructure, hyperscale cloud campuses, and digital real estate actually flows back into local communities as training, jobs, and career mobility.
The sector’s growth is real. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in January 2025 that employment in U.S. data centers grew by more than 60 percent from 2016 to 2023, rising from 306,000 to 501,000 workers. The same Census analysis found that Georgia was among the states where data center employment grew significantly, and that more than 40 percent of U.S. data center employment is concentrated in five states, including Georgia.
The equity question is also real. Census researchers found a persistent gender gap in data center employment and noted that Black workers were under-represented nationally in the sector as of 2023. For a city and state that often talk about inclusive tech growth, that is the part of the story worth watching as closely as the ribbon cuttings.
ATC’s new academy will not answer every workforce question raised by Georgia’s data center surge. But it gives Atlanta a concrete training asset in a fast-growing corner of the technology economy — and it puts South Atlanta students closer to the infrastructure jobs that are increasingly powering the AI era.
Atlanta Tech News covers the people, companies, and institutions building technology across Metro Atlanta — from Alpharetta to Downtown. Have a workforce, infrastructure, or data center story we should be covering? Send us a note.
Sources
- Atlanta Technical College announcement
- Microsoft Datacenter Academy partner listing
- U.S. Census Bureau: Data Centers Growing Fast and Reshaping Local Economies
- CBRE: Atlanta Emerges as One of North America’s Fastest Growing Data Center Hubs
- Microsoft Azure: Georgia’s Fulton and Douglas Counties datacenter region
