Interviewed on 23 Jun 08
George Karidis, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer
SoftLayer is the unequaled provider of on-demand, off-site technology and connectivity for organizations of all sizes and needs. We have made the traditional model of hosting and managed/unmanaged services obsolete. We create solutions that deliver total access to, control over, and scalability for the latest information technologies and services. Everything we do, from hosting to virtualization to data storage, centers on connecting customers to the best technology efficiently and with absolute flexibility and direct control over it – all remotely and with no need for intermediary assistance. Our vision hinges on three main values:
Innovation — We leverage the latest and most advanced technologies, and provide customers a gateway to them through our continuous innovation process.
Empowerment — We demand total, automated control of our own systems, and want our customers to have the same. Our products and services are designed to require zero or little human intervention—they are “better than managed.”
Integration — We consolidate and connect distinct technologies into a single portal and pioneered the industry’s first network-within-a-network topology. Our tools work seamlessly across all of our geographically diverse datacenters.
What unique selling points do you offer?
SoftLayer brings customers a virtual IT environment with superior datacenter, bandwidth, networking, security, hardware, software, monitoring and management services. The foundation of this service resides in the control, management and flexibility of the customer’s IT environment and the ability to adapt and change that environment at any time without service interruption. SoftLayer’s commitment to innovation, empowerment, and integration is demonstrated by tangible advantages for our customers, including:
Automated Services and Solutions — Our revolutionary solutions provide customer-controlled, automated management of core functions including server reboots, OS reloads, software upgrades/migrations, firewall and storage management, load balancing, and more. These invaluable services are not available from most other providers without costly, manual managed service plans.
Industry-Leading Customer Portal and Open API — Our proprietary interfaces provide administrators and their API-applications direct access to more than 100 backend systems and activities. These are executed without any human intermediation, dramatically streamlining server management and reducing cost of IT operations.
Secure Network-Within-a-Network Topology — Our first-of-its-kind network is comprised of two distinct and redundant gigabit architectures. This delivers the ease of use of a public network with the security of a private one. Systems are fully accessible to administrators but safely off-limits from external users.
Immediate Scalability — Our commitment to simplified, on-demand scalability extends from purchase to growth, reduction, refresh, and even cancellation. Online ordering, guaranteed 2-4 hour server delivery, and online cancellation makes scaling up or down as easy and immediate as possible.
Integrated Geographical Diversity — Our datacenters are connected via private, 10G point-to-point connections, and integrated through proprietary automated tools for exceptional speed, redundancy, and flexibility. Customers can choose their server location on demand, create virtual racks containing servers in different physical locations, and even load balance between them.
Describe the services you offer?
SoftLayer provides global, on-demand datacenter and hosting services from facilities across the U.S. We leverage best-in-class connectivity and technology to innovate industry-leading, fully automated solutions that empower enterprises with complete access, control, security, and scalability. We have taken dedicated hosting to the next level. The SoftLayer approach is to provide a Virtual Data Center environment to our customers. This goes well beyond the basics of providing racks and power. Along with the physical elements, we have invested heavily in automation of core functions – like server re-boots; O/S reloads; and upgrades/migrations for services like firewalls, storage, and load balancing. Our customers have unparalleled access to functionality that is not normally part of a simple dedicated hosting plan without the addition of manual managed services. With this insightful strategy and our peerless technical execution, we have created the truly virtual datacenter—and made traditional hosting and managed/unmanaged services obsolete.
Describe your target market?
SoftLayer is the unequaled provider of on-demand, off-site technology and connectivity for organizations and enterprises of all sizes and needs.
How is your company planning for the future?
Our industry has evolved dramatically over the past decade and we only anticipate that this will accelerate as more businesses look to optimize the use of technology and focus resources on driving success in their core market. Outsourcing of many business functions is now common across all sizes of business and geographies. SoftLayer believes that this trend will continue and move to ever more complex elements of technology. So, the evolution of “web hosting” will be towards centralized management of all technologies that a business requires to be competitive; and companies will need to be able to rely on a third party to deliver continuous evolution and innovation in technology. Lines will blur between hardware, software, and IT. There are some fundamental application elements that companies need to function effectively and these will form the new building blocks of next generation hosting companies. Very simply, the evolution of a traditional hosting company is to that of a technology consolidator and enabler. We will all need to move beyond the box and focus on delivering a complete technology solution.
What benefits can you offer your customers?
SoftLayer provides a top of the line customer portal. The portal allows our customers to self-manage their IT infrastructure with automated tools. This not only allows them to change settings quickly and remotely it also allows them to fix many common dedicated server issues like corrupt Operating System issues, replace files deleted by viruses, clean space on a full drive, etc. without the help of an onsite datacenter technician. The portal allows fast DNS entries automatically as well as IP configuration and switching automatically. In the event an automated system fails or the customer doesn’t fully understand the capabilities and can’t find the answer in the KnowledgeLayer our staff quickly directs the problem to the correct support organization. Our technicians are fast, friendly and very capable technically; and we choose only techs with the “can-do” attitude for our staff. We also provide an open API that our customers are free to use to further integrate our management tools into their existing systems or management frameworks.
How do you support your customers?
SoftLayer support is designed to be the customer’s safety net. Our engineers assist with questions about hardware, software, control panels, bandwidth, networking, datacenter and security products we deliver at no additional charge. Security updates are automated and we have Microsoft and Red Hat update servers onsite for customer use as well. Our customer portal and management network are designed to give our customers useful tools and maximum control over the server along with 24/7 Support via ticket or phone if a customer runs into trouble. Customers have access to flash tutorials, a searchable knowledgebase, FAQs, private forums and tickets for issue resolution. If customers find themselves in need of server administration assistance beyond our standard level of support, we provide this for a nominal charge of $3 per request. We support all of our customers and data center facilities with onsite technicians on a 24/7/365 basis. Everyone on the support staff is a SoftLayer employee, not a third party contractor.
