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.

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.

HostingCon is a leading annual conference and trade show for the hosted services industry, bringing professionals together to learn about the latest news, ideas, and technology. This year’s projected attendance is 1,500 professionals from over 30 countries.

Mr. Day will present a session entitled “Meeting Changing Business Needs with On-Demand Infrastructure,” at 2pm, Tuesday, July 20. The discussion will focus on how computing and network resources can be optimized to give end users flexible configurations, delivery schedules, and budgets.

Mr. Fleitman will appear on a panel entitled “Disruptive Strategies and Technologies: Avoid Them or Lose Ground,” at 3pm, Wednesday, July 21. Lead by Dan Ephraim of Digital Realty Trust and Daniel Golding of DH Capital, the panel will discuss the dynamics of owning versus leasing data center facilities and the economic merits of both options.

Mr. Karidis will participate in the conference’s capstone panel entitled “What Tomorrow Brings—Open Q&A to Prepare for the Future,” at 3pm, Wednesday, July 21. The panel will include representatives from other industry-leading firms including Parallels, Microsoft, UK2 Group, Tier1 Research, and CloudLinux.

“HostingCon is a highlight of our calendar—it’s one of the best opportunities for us to connect with our customers and partners face to face,” said Mr. Karidis. “We’re proud that our presence and role at the show has grown each year that we’ve participated. And this year, we’re particularly excited about everything that the week has in store.”

SoftLayer representatives will be available during all exhibition hours at booth #213.

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.

“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

The award recognizes the company with the highest percentage of revenue growth in 2008 over 2007 in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) area. Both private and public companies from any technology industry segment are eligible for the award, as long as they own proprietary technology. SoftLayer received the same award in 2008 for its growth in 2007 over 2006.

George Karidis, Chief Strategy Officer noted, ”We are very proud to win this prestigious award two years in a row. It is an honor being recognized among DFW’s technology leaders – there are many innovative companies doing great things here. Our continuing growth can be directly attributed to our unique approach to hosting and data center services. We’re bringing new ideas and practical advantages to our customers and the market.”

MTBC is the largest technology trade organization in Texas. Its annual Tech Titans Awards and Fast Tech rankings showcase the industry’s most talented individuals and the companies with the most advanced technologies in North Texas. The region is a leading center for technology and innovation in the U.S. and globally. The American Electronics Association Cybercities 2008 report ranked DFW fifth among U.S. cities in high-tech employment, with approximately 176,000 high-tech workers. DFW ranked second nationwide for employment in both the telecommunications services and Internet services sectors.

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, SoftLayer delivers world-class, on-demand virtual data center services on a global basis from facilities located in Dallas, TX; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC. SoftLayer integrates all facets of IT to innovate industry-leading solutions that are fully automated. This empowers customers with complete control, security, scalability, and ease-of-management for their IT environment.

Designed to enable customers to completely restore servers to a bare metal state after an operating system or hardware failure, servers are restored to the latest system image safely stored in a secure SoftLayer repository.

Andrew Maten, Director of IT Systems at SoftLayer remarked, ”Everything we offer is about giving our customers more flexibility, confidence, and control. EVault BMR is a powerful, no-nonsense tool for getting systems back up quickly without losing data or functionality.”

EVault BMR is available for Microsoft Windows systems with SoftLayer’s standard EVault offering. For only $20/month it provides a wide range of benefits, including the capability to:

• Restore systems to a select point-in-time
• Restore systems from image or file-based backups
• Restore systems from EVault backups
• Launch recovery transactions to restore data without a bootable system

The solution provides a more efficient and more reliable alternative to manual restores, and can be used in conjunction with regular backups as well as for data migration. System administrators can choose to execute full system restores or to restore individual files. As with all SoftLayer services, EVault BMR can be ordered and setup through the SoftLayer Customer Portal.

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, SoftLayer delivers on-demand virtual data center services on a global basis from facilities located in Dallas, TX; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC. SoftLayer integrates all facets of IT to innovate industry-leading solutions that are fully automated. This empowers customers with complete control, security, scalability, and ease-of-management for their IT environment.

The solution is designed to bring enterprises greatly increased scalability and unique opportunities for their IT environments. In as few as five minutes, customers can have cloud-based computing instances running enterprise-grade and open source operating systems.

Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer explained, ”From day one, SoftLayer was created to bring customers IT power when, how, and where they need it. CloudLayer Computing is the next step in our evolution. It leverages all of our advantages and expertise in on-demand data center services to provide cloud computing that delivers as promised. There isn’t any other cloud computing service truly like it.”

Unlike other cloud computing services, CloudLayer Computing instances can be seamlessly integrated with dedicated servers, automated services, and other CloudLayer services (including CloudLayer Storage and CloudLayer CDN) to create a fully unified computing solution. Monthly billing is based on hourly usage or a monthly rate with no long-term commitment, providing an exceptional degree of flexibility. Other advantages include:

• Image Library – Capture, template, and store images for accelerated provisioning and management
• Ease of Use – Full access and control via Customer Portal and API
• Full Virtualization – Virtualized networking, security, storage, and management optimizes ”beyond the box”

Simon Crosby, CTO, Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix added, ”SoftLayer’s CloudLayer service will offer customers an enterprise-class, secure cloud infrastructure that is also dynamic, manageable, and cost effective. The cloud-proven scalability, performance, and support for secure isolation and multi-tenancy featured in XenServer provides a powerful virtual infrastructure upon which SoftLayer can deliver a rich set of enterprise services. We are excited to partner with SoftLayer to help transform cloud economics for the enterprise.”

In addition to offering on-demand computing instances, CloudLayer Computing lets SoftLayer customers build their own cloud computing environments from the ground up. SoftLayer dedicated servers can be paired with leading cloud solutions such as the Citrix Cloud Center (Citrix C3) to customize and manage environments ideal for providing online applications and other web-based services.

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, SoftLayer delivers world-class, on-demand virtual data center services on a global basis from facilities located in Dallas, TX; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC. SoftLayer integrates all facets of IT to innovate industry-leading solutions that are fully automated. This empowers customers with complete control, security, scalability, and ease-of-management for their IT environment.