SoftLayer Blog » 3 Bars 3 Questions http://blog.softlayer.com A Behind the Scenes Look at the Best Hosting Provider in the World Tue, 04 Jun 2013 20:27:40 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 3 Bars | 3 Questions: Amsterdam http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/3-bars-3-questions-amsterdam/ http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/3-bars-3-questions-amsterdam/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:30:46 +0000 Jonathan Wisler http://blog.softlayer.com/?p=5847 Within days of signing on to join the SoftLayer team in Amsterdam, I was on a plane to Dallas. With our facility coming online November 7, the onboarding process had to be accelerated, and the trip to our global headquarters provided an excellent crash course in SoftLayer’s strategy and vision for the future. The trip also provided Kevin an opportunity to record a “3 Bars 3 Questions” interview with me after he talked to Michael Ong, the SoftLayer’s APAC general manager.

Because I hadn’t been a SLayer for too long, he took it easy on me, and we had a great discussion about SoftLayer’s strategy in Europe and what customers can expect from our continued global expansion:

In the next week, you’ll get a few behind-the-scenes glimpses of our final Amsterdam data center preparations leading up to our November 7 “Go Live” date. If you haven’t already seen the “Amsterdam Ready to Launch” blog or the instant-classic “SoftLayer is Coming to Town” video about our international expansion, take a few minutes to check those out.

If you’re based in Europe, have a significant customer base in Europe or you’ve just always wanted a server in Amsterdam, you can pre-order your first AMS01 dedicated server or cloud server right now, and you’ll be one of the first in your neighborhood to enjoy our newest facility!

-@jpwisler

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Asia is the largest growth market for SoftLayer right now, and the flood of orders we’ve had to keep up with in our Singapore branch is a testament to the customer demand in that region. With our ambitious growth plans and early successes in SNG, you’ll be seeing a lot of SoftLayermobiles delivering servers around the world pretty soon. Maybe we need a SoftLayerOceanTanker?

When I made trip to Dallas, I met Jonathan Wisler, another newly hired SLayer responsible for the Amsterdam data center and our future Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) expansion. Because I didn’t want him to feel left out, I selected him as my successor in the next 3 Bars 3 Questions interview.

If you have any questions about SoftLayer in Asia, our Singapore data center or Singapore in general, just let me know.

-Michael

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Given our company culture and the time our team spends together in the office, these kinds of jokes are pretty common, and works is a lot more fun as a result. If you want to join the “tens” of fans referenced in the video, find “The Mitch” on Facebook and “Like” accordingly.

If you want to get your very own (extremely rare and valuable) personalized copy of “The Mitch,” mail your head shot to “The Mitch” c/o SoftLayer Technologies, 4849 Alpha Road, Dallas, TX 75244. And yes, employees who haven’t been lucky enough to receive a print are eligible to participate as well.

-@toddmitchell

EDIT: “The Mitch” is in high demand at the cPanel office: http://sftlyr.com/a9. They might need a limited-edition cPanel-specific run.

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Over the past few weeks, we’ve posted video interviews and guest blogs from a few of our featured Technology Partner Marketplace participants, and you can expect to see more where that came from as we sign on new partners with killer applications and services that we can share with our customers. If you want to be one of those new partners, fill out our quick application, and we’ll get the ball rolling!

I’m looking forward to the next installment of “3 Bars | 3 Questions” because “The Mitch” – the man, the myth, the legend – will be in the hot seat.

The Mitch

-@PaulFord

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You should be seeing a blog from Nathan in the next half hour or so with more detail about how we approached managed hosting, so you’ll have all the background you need to springboard into that post after you watch this video.

If you’ve heard everything you need to hear about managed hosting and want to start the process of adding it to servers on your account, visit http://www.softlayer.com/solutions/managed-hosting/ or chat with a sales rep, and they can help you get squared away. If you’re not sure whether it’s a good fit, ask for a sales engineer to consult … They’re a great group with a pretty awesome manager. :-)

Paul, sorry for stealing your spot in the 3 Bars | 3 Questions rotation! I’m handing the baton back over to you to talk about TechWildcatters and the Technology Partners Marketplace in the next episode.

-Tam

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As you’ll see in the video, we actually covered seven or eight questions, but the basic framework for the chat were these three:

  1. How does SoftLayer define the channel?
  2. What’s happening in the SoftLayer channel program?
  3. How does SoftLayer’s referral program differ from the programs offered by competitors?

Because we had quite a bit of ground to cover, the video goes about 15 minutes, but I hope it’s entertaining and informative throughout. Be sure to stick around through the end of the video to hear the best analogy I can think of for SoftLayer’s program.

To learn more about the new referral partner program I mention, email referral@softlayer.com, and we can fill you in.

Since we recently announced an awesome partnership with TechWildcatters, I’m looking forward to hearing what SoftLayer VP of Community Development Paul Ford has to say about what else is coming up. Paul, enjoy the hot seat!

-Drew

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  1. What makes SoftLayer different from any of the other companies you’ve worked for?
  2. When you’re hiring a new sales representative, what do you look for in that person?
  3. What are you most excited about when it comes to the next few months at SoftLayer from a sales perspective?

This week, we used a High Definition video chat, and the quality is pretty impressive. We’re still working to improve and tweak the format and quality of these videos, so you might notice a few blips in the audio recording, but we’ll get those ironed out soon.

All in all, the video chat was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to watching Drew Jenkins enjoy it in the next episode!

-Tom

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Are we in a “The sky is falling!” situation yet? How can customers put pressure on their ISPs and software providers to add IPv6 support? How long with ARIN and SoftLayer have IPv4 addresses to give out now that IANA has released their entire free pool? Here’s my take:

This video was recorded while Kevin was standing outside the Moscone Center in San Francisco at GDC 2011 over a mobile hotspot connection, so the video quality suffered a little. To silence the street noise, Kevin muted his side of the conversation as I spoke.

-Will

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Have you started working with big data? What’s the best method you’ve found to keep it organized and accessible? How do you scale your infrastructure to maintain performance?

-Marc

]]> http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/3-bars-3-questions-big-data-and-search/feed/ 0 3 Bars | 3 Questions: Hybrid Hosting http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/3-bars-3-questions-hybrid-hosting-video-interview/ http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/3-bars-3-questions-hybrid-hosting-video-interview/#comments Wed, 09 Feb 2011 23:01:18 +0000 Duke Skarda http://blog.softlayer.com/2011/ In a new SoftLayer series, Duke Skarda sits in the hot seat to answer some hot topic hosting questions from Kevin Hazard.

This session’s topic: Hybrid Computing.

Who would you like to see in the hot seat, and what hot topics do you want to hear about?

-Duke

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