Welcome to The InnerLayer, The SoftLayer Blog

Having been client in the past, I already had some idea of how amazing the SoftLayer team was. Every interaction I had with the company was fantastic, and though I’ve worked with hundreds of service providers in different industries, I can wholeheartedly say that the service I received at Softlayer was better than any I’d ever experienced. As you can imagine, that left a pretty phenomenal impression on me.

When the opportunity came up a couple of months ago to interview with Paul Ford and the Community Development team, my response was almost instinctual: I jumped at the chance. Having met him and several members of the team in San Francisco in the past (picture below), I knew the kinds of individuals he surrounded himself with — incredibly smart, talented, hard-working, and just downright COOL people. That’s right … Seldom do you find a team in a corporate environment where you can actually say the people are all awesome — people you would want to hang out with even if you didn’t work with them.

After going through the interview process, I hopped on a plane to Dallas to visit the Alpha headquarters. In the whirlwind of introductions and training sessions, I was surprised how productive the trip ended up being. I met most of the folks I’ll be working with on a regular basis, and I had the opportunity to learn more and more about what Community Development is doing. And I was blown away at how much of that work was being done for other companies. The impression I get is that the impact Community Development is having on the business community is real, it’s measurable and it’s making a difference. It’s impactful. From mentorship to event sponsorship to expert recommendations about infrastructure and architecture, nowhere in the industry can you find a company that works so hard for its customers. Trust me. I looked. Nowhere.

When I returned to San Francisco (where I live and will be based), I happened upon the Game Developers Conference where SoftLayer was present in a big way. I grabbed lunch with an existing client, I could tell their interaction with our team was no different from mine when I was a customer: Both sides clearly work together to find a solution that works for everyone. The interaction seemed to transcend the traditional “client-vendor” relationship, and it was clear that the Softlayer team was deeply committed to the client’s mission and product offering.

Learning all of the different ways Softlayer is helping them (beyond providing server and hosting solutions) was would have been astounding … If I didn’t already kind of expect it from my experience. I couldn’t help but be ecstatic about what’s to come.

I met with the team at the GDC booth and got some more first-hand perspective about how we’re embraced by the community. Walking the show floor and coming back to our almost-always-crowded booth (after seeing so many other booths quiet and empty) reinforced my feeling that I joined one of the most exciting companies in the industry. Our Server Challenge kept the booth BUSY for the entire time I was at the show — both days.

Observing how our team engaged the visitors drove home a point I touched on earlier: That SoftLayer employees CARE about every client and prospect. They asked questions about the attendee’s business, what the business’s needs were, and (most impressively to me) held back on “the hard sell.” And that’s pretty unique in itself.

As I embark on week number two of my employment (and beyond), I can’t wait to learn more and more so I can become an integral part of the team. If you’re ever on the West Coast and want to talk SoftLayer, hit me up!

-Joshua

Last week, I spent a few days at GDC in San Francisco, getting a glimpse into the latest games hitting the market. Game developers are a unique bunch, and that uniqueness goes beyond the unbelievable volume of NOS Energy Drinks they consume … They like to test and push the IT envelope, making games more diverse, interactive and social.

The new crop of games showcased at GDC is more resource-intensive — it’s almost like watching an IT arms race; they’re upping the ante for all online gaming companies. The appetite from the public remains relentless, and the pay-off can be huge. Consider that gaming industry research firm DFC Intelligence predicts that worldwide market revenue generated solely from online games is set to reach $26.4 billion in 2015, more than double the $11.9 achieved in 2009.

That’s where SoftLayer comes in. We understand the high stakes in the gaming world and have tailored our IaaS offerings for an optimal end-user experience that stretches from initial release to everyday play. Take a look at what game developer OMGPOP (a SoftLayer customer) achieved with Draw Something: Almost overnight it became the #1 application in Apple’s App Store, tallying more than 26 million downloads in just a few weeks. To put the volume of gameplay into perspective, the game itself is generating more than 30 hours of drawings per second. That’s what what we refer to as “Internet Scale.” When YouTube hit one hour of video uploads per second, they came up with a pretty impressive presentation to talk about that scale … and that’s only one hour per second.

Gamers require a high-performance, always on, graphically attractive and quick-responding experience. If they don’t get that experience, they move on to the next game that can give it to them. With our core strengths of automation and extensive network reach, game developers come to us to easily enable that experience, and in return, they get a platform where they can develop, test, deploy and yes, play their latest games. True “Internet Scale” with easy consumptive billing … Get in and out quickly, and use only what you need.

Some of the most interesting and innovative use cases of how customers take advantage of our platform come from the gaming industry. Because we make it easy to rapidly provision resources (deploy dedicated servers in less than two hours and cloud servers in as few as five minutes) in an automated way (our API), many developers have started incorporating cloud-like functions into their games and applications that add dedicated resources to their infrastructure on-demand as you’d only expect to see in a virtual environment. Now that Flex Images are available, we’re expecting to see a lot more of that.

As I was speaking with a few customers on the show floor, I was amazed to hear how passionate they were about what one called the “secret ingredient” at SoftLayer: Our network. He talked about his trials and tribulations in delivering global reach and performance before he transitioned his infrastructure to SoftLayer, and hearing what our high-bandwidth and low-latency architecture has meant for his games was an affirmation for all of the work we’ve put into creating (and continuing to build) the network.

The rapid pace of innovation and change that keeps the gaming industry going is almost electric … When you walk into a room filled with game developers, their energy is contagious. We ended GDC with an opportunity to do just that. We were proud to sponsor a launch party for our friends at East Side Game Studios as the celebrated the release of two new games — Zombinis and Ruby Skies. Since their NomNom Combo puzzle game is one of the most addicting games on my iPhone, it was a no-brainer to hook up with them at GDC. If you want a peek into the party, check out our GDC photo album on Facebook.

To give you an idea of how much the gaming culture permeates the SoftLayer offices, I need only point out a graffiti mural on one of the walls in our HQ office in Dallas. Because we sometimes get nostalgic for the days of misspent youth in video arcades playing Pac Man, Donkey Kong and Super Mario, we incorporated those iconic games in a piece of artwork in our office:

If you are an aspiring game developer, we’d like to hear from you and help enable the next Internet gaming sensation … Having a good amount of experience with our existing customer base should assure you that we know what we’re talking about. For now, though, it’s my turn to go “Draw Something.”

-@gkdog

I immediately fell in love with CSS when we were introduced in late 2000. The ability to style a whole site outside the HTML was a fantastic concept and probably my first true introduction to separation of style and content. Put your words over here, and put how you display those words over there. So simple! Since then I have always been an advocate of cascading style sheets. Today’s tip will involve an effortless addition that will have your readers say, “Ooooh. That’s a clever little change.”

I find that when I read articles and blogs online, I not only read with my eyes, I scan the page with my mouse. Especially if it’s a wordy article or not styled in smaller columns, I highlight the text by clicking and dragging to help me maintain my focus. Up until recently, whenever you selected text that way in your browser, your operating system would choose the color of the background highlight. For Windows, this is generally blue. For OS X, this is whatever you’ve set your preferences to (which is light blue by default).

For those of you that use a newer version of Webkit (Chrome or Safari) or Gecko (Firefox), the site designer can determine what color to highlight your selection of text, and CSS has made it easy.

/* Webkit */
::selection {
    background: #972F2C;
    color: #FFF;
}
/* Gecko/Mozilla */
::-moz-selection {
    background: #972F2C;
    color: #FFF;
}

As of today, Webkit browsers are the only ones that support ::selection without browser prefixing. Firefox requires the -moz- prefix. Here we have set the highlight background color to “SoftLayer Red” (#972F2C) and made the text color white (#FFF). It should be noted that earlier versions of Webkit and Gecko did not support anything but the background property. There is still limited support for which CSS properties are allowed during selection. You are unable to change font-style, font-size, text-decoration and many other properties, but we can hope support for most of the properties will be available in the future.

This is pretty cool so far, but we can take it one small step further. Just like other selectors, we can apply the ::selection selector to other elements and style each one differently.

h2::selection {
    background: #B72E33;
    color: #FFF;
}
p::selection {
    background: #ACEFB2;
}
div::selection {
    background: #E4DB80;
}
span::selection {
    background: #C780E4;
    color: #FFF;
}

This produces the following:

Surprise your readers and give them some highlight goodness.

Happy coding!

-Philip

I’ve worked two months as a full-time employee at SoftLayer, but if you were to ask anyone here, they’d say I’ve been a SLayer for much longer. They’re half right. I’ve been around, but not as a full-time employee. I started my SoftLayer journey as an intern in the summer before what was supposed to be my last full year of college. After that brief glimpse at what working at SoftLayer was like, I made the decision to condense my senior year into one semester (packed with 33 course credits and countless nights spent in the library) to get back to Dallas to sign on as an official SoftLayer employee. You might wonder why someone would give up her senior year of college to get into the working world … To me it wasn’t about “giving something up” as much as it was about “gaining an opportunity” to work for a company that fosters a culture I genuinely love! I literally could not wait to be back.

There are so many stories I could divulge about my time at SoftLayer — from company events with amusing endings to very thoughtful nicknames to a boss who has transformed into a friend and mentor. I’m not sure how many of these stories would be appreciated to a non-SLayer, and even if I tried to share them, I know they wouldn’t do SoftLayer’s culture justice. Honestly, I cannot make you understand what makes SoftLayer “SoftLayer.” It’s not just a name on a building … It’s the experience of getting a group of passionate people in a room to create and innovate. When you’re surrounded by that atmosphere, you challenge yourself to be better … And this blog is a testament to that atmosphere.

I would not consider myself a writer, and I was very hesitant to write this blog. This will be my first contribution to The Innerlayer, and writing the first words on a blank canvas is always intimidating. As I sat at my desk, wracking my brain for where to begin, it took all of five minutes for a fellow employee to recognize my struggles, pick up her laptop and come over to my desk with her work to help me turn my thoughts into words. I don’t know of many other companies where it would be normal (or even allowed) to literally bring your work station to another person’s desk to share time so generously.

An opportunity to join a culture like that is worth a lot more than a lighter course load and a longer senior year. And it’s only one of many examples I can think of that happen on a regular basis that make working at SoftLayer so enjoyable.

Immediately after having finished this blog, I realized I wasn’t stumped on the idea of writing a blog … I was trying to decide how to adequately convey what SoftLayer’s culture feels like to someone who doesn’t get to experience it. I realize it’s a matter of comprehending the incomprehensible. All I can tell you is that I don’t regret giving up anything by accelerating my senior year. Truth be told, I am learning more here than any classroom, professor or project could have taught me.

Want to join us? There are more than forty available positions at SoftLayer in all of our worldwide locations. What are you waiting for?

-Katie (aka “KornFed” aka “Kansas” aka “Pippa”)*

*I told you there were thoughtful nicknames.

At my house, we share a single iTunes account because as much as I hate to admit it … I listen to the same music as my 11-year-old on occasion, so why buy the same music twice? I have my iPhone setup to automatically sync via any wireless connection, so I occasionally get new apps when someone else in the house downloads something.

Last week, my 8-year-old handed me his iPod and said, “Dad, can you enter the password so I can install BloodnGuns?” No way. He went through three or four reasons that he thought he needed the game, and I just went about my business. A couple of minutes later, he hands me the iPod again and says, “Dad, can you enter the password so I can install Temple Run?” Being a much tamer game, I said I would, but (knowing my son) I followed that up by saying, “Just remember: Anything you install goes to my iPhone, too.” If I entered the password for him for Temple Run, he would be authenticated and could then get BloodnGuns, so I just wanted to remind him that I was born at night, not last night.

The sneaky little guy looked up to me and grinned, “Oh yea, ‘cuz of that cloudamajigger thing.”

Once I finished laughing, I asked him what he meant by Cloudamajigger, and before he could answer, I told him to wait … I wanted to document how he would describe “The Cloud.” With two other kids at home, I thought it might be an interesting focus group of the way kids are learning about technology, so I made it a family project.

I asked each of them three questions and told them to email their answers to me”

1. What is “The Cloud?”
2. Where does “The Cloud” live?
3. What is SoftLayer?

Here are the responses:

The 6-year-old

1. The cloud shoots out a ball and the cloud is awesome!
2. In the sky. It is made out of water.
3. Where dad works, I think he makes monitors.

The 8-year-old

1. It’s a cloud in the sky and they shot a satellite in it. And they could see all the things you need to see on the internet.
2. See number 1 (Yes, he really typed that).
3. Where dad works, he works to make the Internet, and the Internet makes him work.

The 11-year-old

1. It is a group of people where when you post something everyone will be able to see it.
2. I don’t know.
3. A company.

You can see that the 11-year-old is darn close to those wonderful teenage years with that loquacious participation … Wish me luck!

I ask these same questions of people at conferences I attend and get generally the same answers as above. We can write reams of descriptions of the cloud, but in my world, it’s simply “The Cloudamajigger Thing.”

How would you answer those three questions?

-@Skinman454

The iptables tool is one of the simplest, most powerful tools you can use to protect your server. We’ve covered port redirection, rule processing and troubleshooting in previous installments to this “Tips and Tricks” series, but what happens when iptables turns against you and locks you out of your own system?

Getting locked out of a production server can cost both time and money, so it’s worth your time to avoid this. If you follow the correct procedures, you can safeguard yourself from being firewalled off of your server. Here are seven helpful tips to help you keep your sanity and prevent you from locking yourself out.

Tip 1: Keep a safe ruleset handy.

If you are starting with a working ruleset, or even if you are trying to troubleshoot an existing ruleset, take a backup of your iptables configuration before you ever start working on it.

iptables-save > /root/iptables-safe

Then if you do something that prevents your website from working, you can quickly restore it.

iptables-restore < /root/iptables-safe

Tip 2: Create a cron script that will reload to your safe ruleset every minute during testing.

This was pointed out to my by a friend who swears by this method. Just write a quick bash script and set a cron entry that will reload it back to the safe set every minute. You'll have to test quickly, but it will keep you from getting locked out.

Tip 3: Have the IPMI KVM ready.

SoftLayer-pod servers* are equipped with some sort of remote access device. Most of them have a KVM console. You will want to have your VPN connection set up, connected and the KVM window up. You can't paste to and from the KVM, so SSH is typically easier to work with, but it will definitely cut down on the downtime if something does go wrong.

*This may not apply to servers that were originally provisioned under another company name.

Tip 4: Try to avoid generic rules.

The more criteria you specify in the rule, the less chance you will have of locking yourself out. I would liken this to a pie. A specific rule is a very thin slice of the pie.

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -s 10.0.0.0/8 -d 123.123.123.123 -j DROP

But if you block port 22 from any to any, it's a very large slice.

iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j DROP

There are plenty of ways that you can be more specific. For example, using "-i eth0" will limit the processing to a single NIC in your server. This way, it will not apply the rule to eth1.

Tip 5: Whitelist your IP address at the top of your ruleset.

This may make testing more difficult unless you have a secondary offsite test server, but this is a very effective method of not getting locked out.

iptables -I INPUT -s <your IP> -j ACCEPT

You need to put this as the FIRST rule in order for it to work properly ("-I" inserts it as the first rule, whereas "-A" appends it to the end of the list).

Tip 6: Know and understand all of the rules in your current configuration.

Not making the mistake in the first place is half the battle. If you understand the inner workings behind your iptables ruleset, it will make your life easier. Draw a flow chart if you must.

Tip 7: Understand the way that iptables processes rules.

Remember, the rules start at the top of the chain and go down, unless specified otherwise. Crack open the iptables man page and learn about the options you are using.

-Mark

What would you do if your business received $50,000-$100,000 with no strings attached and no equity given up? Spend it to market to new customers? Invest in your infrastructure to scale your application? Use it lease office space that doesn’t sit above a bowling alley? Buy all of your employees puppies? It’s a dilemma that every startup on the planet would love to face, and with the launch of this year’s MassChallenge Startup Accelerator and Competition, that “dilemma” won’t just be theoretical.

If you haven’t heard of MassChallenge before, here’s the quick rundown: MassChallenge is the largest startup accelerator and competition in the world, and the first to support high-impact, early-stage entrepreneurs with no strings attached. Participants are invited to a three-month accelerator program with world-class mentorship and training, free office space, access to funding, media and more. 15-20 startups are selected as winners of $50,000-$100,000, totaling $1.1M in cash awards. $4M+ in-kind support is provided (including some hosting goodness from SoftLayer). It’s open to all: Any startup can enter, from anywhere, in any industry. No equity is taken. No restrictions apply.

Every entrant, not just the winners, will receive access to workshops, mentors, executives, other team members and sources of funding. Experts from the Massachusetts tech ecosystem will identify the highest potential startups, which will receive cash prizes and will qualify for privileged access to funding sources from across Massachusetts.

Why is MassChallenge important to SoftLayer? Well SoftLayer Loves Startups, and as an expression of that love, SoftLayer’s Catalyst Program — our technology entrepreneur mentorship initiative will provide $25,000 cash to MassChallenge in addition to $1,000 per month of credit for qualifying participants to use on the SoftLayer platform (servers, cloud instances, storage, etc.) for one full year … Which is reason enough to participate, right?

We’re no strangers to the startup scene, and the reception we’ve received from organizations like MassChallenge, TechStars Cloud and Beta have only reinforced our commitment to communities created to foster entrepreneurship and innovation. I can’t count the number of killer startups I’ve met in the past month (much less the past year), and I’m blown away by the portfolio of startup companies already in the Catalyst Program … That’s not a reason to be satisfied, though. We’re not resting on our laurels; we’re speeding up.

What does it mean for you as an entrepreneur? Easy: You need to sign up immediately, if not sooner. The deadline for applications for the 2012 competition is April 11, and if you apply before March 15, you’ll be eligible for a $100 discount on the application fee. Visit masschallenge.org to learn more and get the ball rolling.

-@PaulFord

This guest blog features Fruition, a featured member of the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Fruition’s SEO and SEM reporting web app provides highly accurate reports on search engine rankings and onsite signals that impact your Google and Bing rankings. In the video below, learn a little more about Fruition (and a few key SEO/SEM tips for small businesses) from Fruition’s Brad Anderson, and scroll down to read about SEO Goals and Key Indicators.

SEO Goals and Key Indicators

Google’s Feb 2012 Update

Between February 25-28th Google rolled out another big set of changes to their algorithm. These changes knocked down a lot of short cuts that SEO companies were using, including blog networks. The red flags have been there for a long time. Blog networks are easy to uncover simply because of the complexity of trying to setup a truly diverse hosting environment. It is not just separate C-class IP addresses it is also registrars, DNS, admin login IP addresses, plug-in profiles, etc. There are so many easy ways to group sites as being related or identical that it is not worth the effort of trying to take short cuts with your linking. Instead focus on what is going to have a lasting impact on your SEO:

• Page Speed – Improve your code, increase your hardware, etc.
• Better Onsite Content
• Usability

These three factors will have a lasting impact on your SEO during 2012 and beyond.

Get Your Strategy Together

Successful internet marketing campaigns have one thing in common: Comprehensive strategies. Today’s marketplace makes it extremely difficult to compete in one area of internet marketing without complimenting that work in several other areas. For example, why invest in search engine optimization if you don’t have a quality website to convert the traffic to leads or sales? Why invest in a mobile app if you aren’t going to optimize the listing to generate a high volume of downloads? These examples show how a comprehensive strategy to internet marketing is the best approach for future success.

Fruition.net has been successful in this comprehensive approach by staying at the forefront of each individual strategy. At the core of these strategies is a collection of goals and key indicators we use to monitor, adjust, and track performance. Below you will find a few of the most important goals for each area of internet marketing.

Comprehensive Internet Marketing Strategies

Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website with the end goal of improving your ranking on the major search engines. Here are the goals and key indicators you should be tracking to evaluate the success of your SEO campaign:

Read Frution’s Tips for SEO/SEM Domination »

Unfortunately, having “book knowledge” (or in this case “blog knowledge”) about backups and applying that knowledge faithfully and regularly are not necessarily one and the same. Regardless of how many times you hear it or read it, if you aren’t actively protecting your data, YOU SHOULD BE.

Here are a few questions to help you determine whether your data is endangered:

1. Is your data backed up?
2. How often is your data backed up?
3. How often do you test your backups?
4. Is your data backed up externally from your server?
5. Are your backups in another data center?
6. Are your backups in another city?
7. Are your backups stored with a different provider?
8. Do you have local backups?
9. Are your backups backed up?
10. How many people in your organization know where your backups are and how to restore them?
11. What’s the greatest amount of data you might lose in the event of a server crash before your next backup?
12. What is the business impact of that data being lost?
13. If your server were to crash and the hard drives were unrecoverable, how long would it take you to restore all of your data?
14. What is the business impact of your data being lost or inaccessible for the length of time you answered in the last question?

We can all agree that the idea of backups and data protection is a great one, but when it comes to investing in that idea, some folks change their tune. While each of the above questions has a “good” answer when it comes to keeping your data safe, your business might not need “good” answers to all of them for your data to be backed up sufficiently. You should understand the value of your data to your business and invest in its protection accordingly.

For example, a million-dollar business running on a single server will probably value its backups more highly than a hobbyist with a blog she contributes to once every year and a half. The million-dollar business needs more “good” answers than the hobbyist, so the business should invest more in the protection of its data than the hobbyist.

If you haven’t taken time to quantify the business impact of losing your primary data (questions 11-14), sit down with a pencil and paper and take time to thoughtfully answer those questions for your business. Are any of those answers surprising to you? Do they make you want to reevaluate your approach to backups or your investment in protecting your data?

The funny thing about backups is that you don’t need them until you NEED them, and when you NEED them, you’ll usually want to kick yourself if you don’t have them.

Don’t end up kicking yourself.

-@khazard

P.S. SoftLayer has a ton of amazing backup solutions but in the interested of making this post accessible and sharable, I won’t go crazy linking to them throughout the post. The latest product release that got me thinking about this topic was the SoftLayer Object Storage launch, and if you’re concerned about your answers to any of the above questions, object storage may be an economical way to easily get some more “good” answers.

This is a guest blog featuring Kontagent, one of this month’s addition to the SoftLayer Technology Partners Marketplace. Kontagent’s kSuite Analytics Platform is a leading enterprise analytics solution for social and mobile application developers. Its powerful dashboard and data science expertise provide organization-wide insights into how customers interact within applications and how to act on that data. Below the video, you’ll see an excerpt from a very interesting interview they facilitated with Gaia Online’s CEO with fantastic insight into mobile app metrics.

Important Mobile App Metrics to Track

At Kontagent, we’ve helped hundreds of social customers win by helping them gain better insights into their users’ behaviors. We’re always improving our already-powerful, best-in-class analytics platform, and we’ve been leveraging our knowledge and experience to help many of our social customers make a successful transition into the mobile space, too.

Whether you’re in the early stages of developing a mobile application, or you’ve already launched it and have a substantial user base, looking to social app developers for a history lesson on how to do it right can give you a huge head-start, and greater chance at success.

Gaia Online has “done it right” with Monster Galaxy — a hit on both Facebook and iOS. In the first installment of our Kontagent Konnect Executive Interview Series, we spoke with CEO Mike Sego on how the company is applying many of the lessons it learned in moving social-to-mobile, including:

• The metrics that are most important to succeeding on mobile
• How to monetize on the F2P model
• How to successfully split-test on iOS (yes, it is possible!)
• Other tactics used to keep players engaged and coming back for more

Q: What are the overarching fundamentals for developers who want to make the social to mobile transition? Do these fundamentals also apply to mobile developers in general?
A: Applying the knowledge you gained on Facebook to developing for mobile is the most effective way we’ve found to succeed in the mobile space.

When it comes to content, the mechanics are almost identical for what motivates user engagement, retention, and monetization between mobile and social. Appointment mechanics, energy mechanics, leaving players wanting more, designing specific goals that are just out of reach until multiple play sessions, etc.—the user experience is consistent.

When it comes to social and mobile game apps, we have found that free-to-play models are the most successful at attracting users. Beyond that, you should focus on a very tight conversion funnel; once a new user has installed your application, analyze every action she takes through the levels or stages of your app. When you start looking at cohorts of users, if there is a spike in drop-offs, you should start asking yourself, ‘What is it about this particular stage that could be turning off users? Did I make the level too difficult? Was it not difficult enough? What are some other incentives I can bake into this particular point of the app to get them to keep going?’

But, as you continue to develop your application, keep in mind that you should develop and release quickly, and test often. The trick is to test, fine-tune and iterate with user data. These insights will help you to improve conversion. Spending a disproportionate amount of time instrumenting and scrutinizing the new user experience will pay dividends down the line. This is true for both social and mobile games.

Q: What are the metrics you pay most attention to?
Just as it was in social, the two biggest levers in mobile are still minimizing customer acquisition costs (CAC), and maximizing lifetime value (LTV). The question boils down to this: How can we acquire as many users as possible, for as little money as possible? And, how can we generate as much revenue as possible from those users? Everything else is an input into those two major metrics because those two metrics are what will ultimately determine if you have a scalable hit or a game that just won’t pay for itself.

The full interview goes on a bit longer, and it has profound responses topics we alluded to earlier in the post. We don’t want to over-stay our generous welcome here on the SoftLayer blog, so if social and mobile application development are of interest to you, register here (for free) to learn more from the complete interview.

-Catherine Mylinh, Kontagent