Issued annually, the Inc. 500|5000 list ranks the fastest growing companies in the U.S. Companies were required to have minimum revenues of $80,000 in 2006 and minimum revenues of $2 million in 2009 to qualify for the 2010 list, and must be privately held, for profit, and independent as of December 31, 2009.

“We are very pleased to be included in the Inc. 500. It is an honor to be listed among America’s top private companies and leading entrepreneurs,” said George Karidis, SoftLayer Chief Strategy Officer. “We have seen strong revenue growth and remarkable success since our founding in 2005, even through a challenging, turbulent economic climate.”

SoftLayer’s growth has been enabled by its strategic position to address the dynamic needs of businesses in an unstable economy. SoftLayer’s IT solutions offers an option for enterprises of any size, from any industry, to outsource their data center infrastructure needs and focus their resources on operational needs rather than capital expenditures.

The company continues to set milestones, with the following highlights:

• Employee head count increased from 20 employees in 2009 to over 50 for 2010.
• EBITDA margins in excess of 40%
• Projected gross revenues of $13 million for 2010
• Ending 2010 with projected annualized revenues of $20 million
• #1 Fastest Growing Web Hosting Company in Inc. 500 list
• #2 Fastest Growing Company Award in Chicago Award by Inc Magazine
• #3 Fastest Growing Company Award in IT Services by Inc Magazine

The firm is positioned for continued growth, having recently launched Cascade, SingleHop’s cloud computing platform. “Like many of our innovative products, Cascade will undoubtedly play a significant role in our future growth. Cascade is a simple product that is added to on top of a dedicated server, yet offers advanced cloud hosting benefits. It’s a simple concept, with a simple pricing model, which we feel is important in the cloud computing space.” says Zak Boca.

Although the merger is not yet a done deal between the two companies, both Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer, and Doug Erwin believe the end is almost in sight. During a phone conversation on Friday, Lance and Doug gave their thoughts on the merger deal brewing between the two companies.

“Is this 100% done deal? Well we can’t say we are 100%, but we are really close to that. And Doug and I are really close to putting these two companies together in the next 90 days,” says Lance.

Doug adds, “Let me put it another way. It’s not over till the fat lady sings.. and she is warming up on the side. There is a lot of work that needs to be done between our two staffs and I think we are going about it the right way, in that we hired an outside consultant… Bain Consultant to come in and work with us.”

As both sides continue to look at the merger, one of the number one concerns has been to ensure the current customers are treated well. Regarding the customers Erwin says, “I think the biggest concern Lance and I have is for a seamless integration that does not affect the customer.” To this end, Bain & Company consulting has been brought in to ensure that the possible merger avoids the many pitfalls that can occur.|

“About 6 months ago G.I. Partners approached SoftLayer about doing an investment in the company,” Lance explains. “They have done a lot of investment in this space overall including Digital Realty, Savvis, Telx, The Planet and most recently ViaWest. After they approached us and we started going through due diligence, we began to find there was a lot of common DNA with The Planet and so as we began to close the process over the last 30 days or so, we started exploring the possibility of putting these two companies together.”

That common DNA doesn’t just extend to the family history between the two companies. It also includes many mutual customers. They both also target the dedicated and cloud hosting space. However, if both companies were purely similar, merging them would simply create a larger company, which is technically not a bad thing…, but it would be somewhat boring.

In addition to the similar fields of interest, SoftLayer brings their infrastructure know how. The plans for the merger include moving customers to SoftLayer’s automation layer. This translates to the new company able to take on more customers, keeping staff low, and yet maintaining their high-grade support.

The Planet offers an enterprise level suite of services. Namely, The Planet will bring colocation and managed hosting to the party. Along with these hosting addons, The Planet also brings in enterprise level hosting features and the expertise in handling those services.

SoftLayer, up until recently, has avoided the colocation and managed hosting spaces. They have instead focused on their target niche and have not deviated from that path. And yet, if they do merge with The Planet, adding those services is part and parcel of the new company. So why now? Why would SoftLayer, who have been disciplined in avoiding the watering down of their brand, want to increase their services and in fact, consider adding those services as a definite strength?|

“It’s been on the drawing board for a long time and we are going to bring a SoftLayer approach to those two types of services that are not yet seen in the industry. As we talk about it internally we are going to pull out a big stick and poke a lot of our competitors in the eye when they see what we are going to do to colocation and managed services,” says Lance.

On the possibilities of an IPO, Lance says, “I think that [an IPO] is the most logical step for the combined companies, putting them together they are going to be about 300 million in revenues and growing rapidly and you get to a point where the number of potential suitors out their drops dramatically simply because of the size of the company so an IPO becomes the natural choice.

“So if you want to sum it up, you could say we are strapping on the gloves, ” says Doug. However, you sum it up, the potential merger between The Planet and SoftLayer could be a hosting juggernaut rivaled by very few especially in the dedicated server market.

SoftLayer recognizes that offering new products increases customer retention and sales of its servers without significant financial or time commitments.

“We always aim to offer our customers the latest technologies to compliment their businesses,” said George Karidis, Chief Strategy Officer at SoftLayer. “Parallels is a world class leader in virtualized infrastructure so we want to ensure our customers benefit from that level of innovation. We expect to see new virtual server sales increases as a result of launching Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal.”

Parallels currently supports more than one million Cloud-based virtual environments through its existing Parallels Virtuozzo Containers technology. This industry leading virtual infrastructure solution is complimented by Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal enabling customers like SoftLayer to offer the widest selection of offerings to their clients. The Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal solution leverages the powerful hypervisor technology of Parallels’ award-winning desktop virtualization products, designed to manage a range of scenarios, from development and testing in the Cloud to consolidating multiple operating systems on a single server.

Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal seamlessly integrates with Parallels Virtual Automation enabling the quick and easy launch of new services from a centralized web management and automation system. Parallels Virtual Automation ties together the Parallels server virtualization suite simplifying the day to day activities of system administrators with a single pane of glass regardless of the underlying Parallels solution. The combined solution features full life-cycle service delivery management for virtualized services including provisioning, upgrades, monitoring, backup, customer self-service, migration and other components.

“One of the key reasons in launching Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal was choice,” said Karidis. “Being able to grow our business while addressing new audiences that require expanded OS support is a really important part of our strategy. This product has helped us diversify our product offerings and our resellers and small to medium customers will benefit from this technology and the ability to use it along side Parallels Virtuozzo Containers.”

“Parallels understands the importance of automation tools and the innovative approach of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers has made us the leader in virtualized services,” said Jack Zubarev, President of Worldwide Service Providers. “The flexibility of hypervisor technology in Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal, automated by Parallels Virtual Automation allows service providers like SoftLayer to roll-out the server virtualization approach that most suits their needs, with minimal financial and time investment.”

Parallels Server 4 Bare Metal
Parallels Server Bare Metal is a hypervisor-based virtual infrastructure solution that supports a broad range of operating systems and applications; and enables a wide range of usage scenarios from development and testing to elastic Cloud computing. The product leverages Parallels’ powerful hypervisor technology onto the server, offering a highly scalable architecture that supports up to 12 vCPUs, 64GB vRAM, 2TB vHDDs and 16 vNICs per virtual machine for intensive applications. In addition, Parallels has implemented several Intel specific processor capabilities, such as Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O, FlexPriority, Extended Page Tables and Virtual Processor Identification, to further enhance performance.

“We continue gaining momentum every year. We broke more projections and records this year than last, and 2010 will bring even more of the same,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. “These three new pods meet the customer demand increases that we expect in the very near future. And they are only preliminary measures in our growth strategy for 2010. We have some big plans which we can’t wait to share with everyone.”

“We’re extremely excited to introduce Private Cloud services to our customers. Private Cloud gives Softlayer customers yet another dynamic, scalable infrastructure option,” said Nathan Day, CTO, SoftLayer. “This will provide a service with segregated physical computing hardware giving customers security and peace of mind with the benefits of unlimited, on-demand scalability.”

SoftLayer’s milestones in 2009 included:

• More than 5,700 active customers across 110+ countries
• More than 23,000 deployed servers
• Placement in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services
• Introduction of CloudLayer™ line of cloud services, including CloudLayer Storage, CloudLayer CDN, CloudLayer Computing, and Bare Metal Cloud™
• Industry’s first deployment of Intel® Nehalem microarchitecture
• IPv6 support across all data centers
• Multiple carrier additions across all data centers for a total of 290Gbps

The new pods are part of SoftLayer’s unique approach to data center design. Each of the company’s geographically diverse data centers consists of multiple pods built to identical specifications with the same bestin- class methodologies. This level of standardization across all its geographic locations enables SoftLayer to optimize key data center performance variables, including space, power, network, personnel, and internal infrastructure.

The MD3000i uses iSCSI Ethernet technology to enable shared storage across multiple servers, eliminating the need to build out a costly fiber channel infrastructure. Up to 16 servers can share the MD3000i, which has 15 internal drive slots for a total storage capacity up to 15 terabytes (TB). In the event more capacity is required, companies can add up to two MD1000 storage arrays to the MD3000i for an additional 45TB.
“One of the most critical business challenges customers face today is data storage, and all too often it’s also one of the most costly,” said Rob Walters, director of product management for The Planet. “The MD3000i lowers the barrier to entry for high-performance, consolidated storage, and also provides a clear path for expansion for companies that expect to see their storage requirements grow.”

About the Dell PowerVault MD3000i
The iSCSI SAN array provides a scalable and low-cost storage solution, which continually protects daily operations and enables an easy path for expansion:
Cost-effective: The MD3000i, The Planet’s lowest-priced SAN, can be shared by as many as 16 servers, which eliminates the high cost of buying individual storage devices for each server.

Scalable: In addition to its 15 internal drive slots, customers can add up to two 15-drive MD1000 disk arrays to the MD3000i, for up to 45TB of storage.

Capable: With its large capacity and high availability, the MD3000i is ideal for businesses running performance-intensive applications, databases, and file or archive storage.

The Planet, a global leader in IT hosting, today announced the availability of the Dell PowerVault MD3000i, a high-performance storage area network (SAN) disk array. Ideal for multi-server environments such as virtual and private racks, the MD3000i offers a cost-effective and scalable storage solution.

The MD3000i uses iSCSI Ethernet technology to enable shared storage across multiple servers, eliminating the need to build out a costly fiber channel infrastructure. Up to 16 servers can share the MD3000i, which has 15 internal drive slots for a total storage capacity up to 15 terabytes (TB). In the event more capacity is required, companies can add up to two MD1000 storage arrays to the MD3000i for an additional 45TB.
“One of the most critical business challenges customers face today is data storage, and all too often it’s also one of the most costly,” said Rob Walters, director of product management for The Planet. “The MD3000i lowers the barrier to entry for high-performance, consolidated storage, and also provides a clear path for expansion for companies that expect to see their storage requirements grow.”

About the Dell PowerVault MD3000i
The iSCSI SAN array provides a scalable and low-cost storage solution, which continually protects daily operations and enables an easy path for expansion:
Cost-effective: The MD3000i, The Planet’s lowest-priced SAN, can be shared by as many as 16 servers, which eliminates the high cost of buying individual storage devices for each server.

Scalable: In addition to its 15 internal drive slots, customers can add up to two 15-drive MD1000 disk arrays to the MD3000i, for up to 45TB of storage.

Capable: With its large capacity and high availability, the MD3000i is ideal for businesses running performance-intensive applications, databases, and file or archive storage.

“These custom configurations are perfect for the medium-to-large enterprise,” says Taylor Giddens, Director, Dedicated Services for Codero. “Whether to secure core data, handle spikes in traffic or support thousands of users at once, each server network delivers a flexible solution with an emphasis on uptime.”

Codero’s network configurations feature high-quality components including dedicated load balancing, Cisco firewall, EVault managed backup, 100MB switch, Gigabit Private VLAN and database (dynamic, replication or cluster). All server setups are available as Linux or Windows and may be further customized to meet any business need.

Windows Server 2008 R2 enables dynamic provisioning and management of virtual workloads with the much-anticipated update to Microsoft’s Hyper-V™. With its Live Migration-enabling technology, moves between physical hosts now happen in milliseconds. As the first Windows Server operating system with a true 64-bit architecture, R2 also offers powerful hardware and scaling features.
“Our customers around the world are always looking for ways to do more with less, and Windows Server 2008 R2 is optimized to meet those demands,” said Todd Mitchell, general manager for dedicated hosting and global services at The Planet. “As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, we stay in lockstep with new technologies from Microsoft to give our customers more ways to reduce operating costs and increase efficiencies.”

About Windows Server 2008 R2
The latest operating system from Microsoft includes a number of updates that enhance server performance and management control:

• Powerful hardware and scaling features; R2 is the first Windows Server operating system to move solely to a 64-bit architecture, and CPU-specific enhancements enable customers to run up to 256 logical processors.
• Updated Hyper-V augments virtual workload management; Hyper-V enables Live Migration, a new feature for R2 that moves virtual machines in a matter of milliseconds.
• Ubiquitous remote access; DirectAccess allows remote users to seamlessly access corporate resources without a VPN connection or client software.
• Strongest Windows application platform to date; R2 includes the new Internet Information Services 7 (IIS 7.0), which helps applications run faster while using fewer system resources.

This program is particularly well-suited to large partners and resellers who often have hundreds (or thousands) of servers representing huge ongoing monthly costs. Resellers can own all their servers after one year of service, significantly reducing their costs, which they can use to grow their businesses.

“We understand that in tough economic times customers are looking for more and more value, and we believe this is one of the best deals out there,” states William Song, Senior Product Manager. “This represents a paradigm shift in the relationship between customer and web host, offering much more transparency in the billing practices. At other web hosts customers are typically forced to pay outrageous ongoing monthly fees for hardware that is often 3-4 years old. With the Superb lease-to-own program customers always know that they have paid off their hardware after year 1, and the low ongoing fees simply represent, space, power, AC, support, and bandwidth among other costs. If customers wish to upgrade their server they can do so at wholesale rates, and if they decide to leave they can have the server shipped to them, because they own it! Compare that to most companies where customers end up paying thousands of dollars more (many times the cost of the server hardware) and end up with nothing when they cancel.”

“We’re extremely proud that our record of success has continued. Our momentum just keeps building,” said Mike Jones, CFO, SoftLayer™. “It’s not a coincidence that, in this economic climate, more customers are turning to us for services designed to help them optimize their operations and focus on their own business objectives. SoftLayer’s results to date can be attributed to the use of cutting-edge technology deployments that did not exist 3-5 years ago.”

Key milestones for SoftLayer through the beginning of October of this year have included:

• $90 million annualized run rate
• +40% EBITDA margins
• 12 consecutive months of sequential increases in GAAP profitability
• Strong financial position, including $35 million of capital to fund future expansion
• On track for setting a record in 2009 of over 80 million in annual revenue
• Growth to more than 5,700 active customers across 110+ countries
• More than 21,000 deployed servers
• Received TechTitans award as the fastest growing company in Dallas for second consecutive year
• Placed in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and Cloud Infrastructure Services
• Certified compliance with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S.-European Union Safe Harbor framework

SoftLayer has continued leading the market with significant new and updated services including:

• CloudLayer™ line of cloud services, including CloudLayer Storage, CloudLayer CDN, CloudLayer Computing, and Bare Metal Cloud™
• Industry’s first deployment of Intel® Nehalem microarchitecture
• IPv6 support across all data centers
• Additional operating systems including SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server and Microsoft® Windows Server Core
• Expanded environmental sustainability efforts
• SoftLayer Outlet, a value server sales channel
• Multiple carrier additions across all data centers for a total of 290Gbps
• New virtualization solutions including VMware® ESX hypervisor and Citrix® NetScaler® VPX
• Participation in Microsoft Hosting BizSpark™ and Microsoft WebsiteSpark™ programs