Posts Tagged ‘expansion’

Almost a year ago, I walked into SoftLayer for the first time as an employee, but it wasn’t my first encounter with the business. I knew quite a bit about SoftLayer (and what it would be like to work for SoftLayer) because a family member and more than a handful of friends were already SLayers. By the time applied to join the company as an “API Evangelist,” I had high expectations … Or so I thought. As it turns out, I had no idea how outstanding working for SoftLayer would be.

When people talk about company culture, you usually hear buzzwords like “collaborative environment,” “team-oriented,” “transparency” and “progressive thinking.” To a certain extent, they all sound a little forced and cliche, and it almost kills me that they’re exactly the words I’d use to honestly describe my SoftLayer experience. Why? Because every day, I see people collaborating on news ways to innovate, execute code more efficiently and improve our systems … And not only do I see that happening, I feel involved in those conversations as well.

In a day and age where it seems most companies do business like they are herding sheep, it’s pretty phenomenal to work in an environment where employees are encouraged to speak, and when they speak, they are heard.

A surprisingly large part of SoftLayer’s company culture involves getting employees out of the office. Yes … I said out of the office! From baseball games to barbeque contests to dragon boat races, the SoftLayer team actually becomes more of a “team” when we leave the office. In my previous jobs, the last thing I’d want to do at 5:00pm on a Friday would be to spend a couple more hours with my work desk’s neighbor. These days, I look forward to the chances to hang out with my coworkers outside the office. I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth.

Just look at the Pink Soles in Motion fundraiser to raise money and support the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Did it make a difference that the event was on a Saturday? Absolutely not. You could see SLayers in their SoftLayer gear everywhere you looked.

I am always impressed by the sheer number of people who love what they do and love being a part of SoftLayer. If you subscribe to the “SoftLayer Culture” RSS feed, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about … That category is filled with posts from employees who can’t help but share their love for SoftLayer with the world. When you get so many passionate and enthusiastic people under one roof, you get a with contagious excitement and the shared purpose of providing the best possible products and services to our customers.

When I walk through the office and see happy people talking about their work, I know I’m in the right place.

Thanks for the one-year anniversary, SoftLayer! It’s been a great year.

If you want to put the SoftLayer culture to the test, check out the available Careers at SoftLayer to find an opportunity that can bring you onto the team. You won’t be disappointed.

-Sarah

SoftLayer data centers are designed in a “pod” concept: Every facility in every location is laid out similarly, and you’ll find the same network and server hardware connected to the same network. The idea behind it is that this design makes it easier for us to build out new locations quickly, we can have identical operational processes and procedures in each facility, and customers can expect the exact same hosting experience regardless of data center location. When you’ve got several data centers in one state, that uniformity is easy to execute. When you open facilities on opposite sides of the country, it seems a little more difficult. Open a facility in another country (and introduce the challenge of getting all of that uniformity across an ocean), and you’re looking at a pretty daunting task.

Last month, I hopped on a plane from Houston to London to attend Cloud Expo Europe. Because I was more or less “in the neighborhood” of our newest data center in Amsterdam, I was able to take a short flight to The Netherlands to do some investigatory journalism … err … “to visit the AMS01 team.”

Is AMS01 worthy of the SoftLayer name? … How does it differ from our US facilities? … Why is everything written in Dutch at the Amsterdam airport?

The answers to my hard-hitting questions were pretty clear: SoftLayer’s Amsterdam facility is absolutely deserving of the SoftLayer name … The only noticeable differences between AMS01 and DAL05 are the cities they’re located in … Everything’s written in Dutch because the airport happens to be in The Netherlands, and people speak Dutch in The Netherlands (that last question didn’t get incorporated into the video, but I thought you might be curious).

Nearly every aspect of the data center mirrors what you see in WDC, SEA, HOU, SJC and DAL. The only differences I really noticed were what the PDUs looked like, what kind of power adapter was used on the crash carts, and what language was used on the AMS facility’s floor map. One of the most interesting observations: All of the servers and power strips on the racks used US power plugs … This characteristic was particularly impressive to me because every gadget I brought with me seemed to need its own power converter to recharge.

When you see us talking about the facilities being “the same,” that’s not a loosely used general term … We could pull a server from its rack in DAL05, buckle it into an airplane seat for a 10-hour flight, bring it to AMS01 (via any of the unique modes of Amsterdam transportation you saw at the beginning of the video), and slide it into a rack in Amsterdam where we could simply plug it in. It’d be back online and accessible over the public and private networks as though nothing changed … Though with Flex Images making it so easy to replicate cloud and dedicated instances in any facility, you’ll just have to take our word for it when it comes to the whole “send a server over to another data center on a plane” thing.

While I was visiting AMS01, Jonathan Wisler took a few minutes out of his day to give a full tour of the data center’s server room, and we’ve got video and pictures to share with more shots of our beautiful servers in their European home. If there’s anything in particular you want to see from AMS01, let us know, and we’ll do our best to share it!

-@khazard

P.S. Shout out to the SLayers in the Amsterdam office who offered their linguistic expertise to add a little flair to the start of the video … From the four employees who happened to be in the office when I was asking for help, we had six fluent-language contributions: English, Italian, French, Dutch, Polish and German!

**UPDATE** After posting this video, I learned that the “US” server power plugs I referred to are actually a worldwide computer standard called C13 (male) and C14 (female).

Now that I’ve had about twelve years of work experience, I’m at a point in my life where I can’t really claim to be “young” or “inexperienced” anymore. Throughout my professional career, I’ve been exposed to many different types of work environments, and I must say that never have I encountered as diverse a work force as the one I work with now at SoftLayer *ndash; everything from family background to hobbies.

Since my first day at SoftLayer, I’ve been amazed to learn about all the different places my coworkers have come from. To name a few that stood out and to give you an idea of how diverse our team is, I have colleagues that are from Madagascar, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Korea, Japan, and even “Texas.” It is fascinating to learn more about other cultures from them, and because we work together every day, I have a lot of great opportunities to do so.

To take this concept of diversity even further, as I got to know my coworkers more, I soon realized that our differences extended significantly beyond nationality since we have such varied personal hobbies and interests from all walks of life. I’ve gotten to know individuals that are into acting for short films, piloting airplanes, live-action role playing, skateboarding, cooking, car drifting, and barbecuing. You may not find this unusual if you’ve have encountered people with similar interests at some point in your lives, but to have them all in a single workplace is pretty incredible to me.

Despite all these differences in nationality and personal interests, we all share the same passion for computer hardware and software that is an integral part of the business services that SoftLayer offers. We could talk for hours on end about the different technologies, and even with all of our differences, SoftLayer’s unified, inviting corporate culture makes it easy for us to share a passion for excellent customer support. If you talk to Lance, you’ll hear him say that the customer experience is the only thing that matters to him, and when your CEO lives and breathes that mantra, it’s easy for everyone to follow.

When I first heard about the plans to expand overseas into Amsterdam and Singapore, I was a little nervous at the challenge, but when I started to think about it, our business model has always involved employing diverse talents with a common goal that could be implemented essentially anywhere in the world with little difficulty.

SoftLayer has become a great melting pot of technical staff, and because new employees are rapidly assimilated into the team, their unique interests and personalities immediately become a part of the far-reaching (and growing) landscape of SoftLayer diversity.

Want to bring some of your diversity to our team? Right now we have 50+ open positions in almost every department of the company and in every location. Just promise when you join our team that you’ll send me a message to introduce yourself!

-Danny

In less than six years, SoftLayer has grown pretty drastically. We started as a small company with ten people crammed into a living room, brainstorming how to build one innovative data center in Dallas. Now we have more than six hundred employees managing thirteen data centers on three different continents. It’s insane to see how far we’ve come when you read those two sentences, and as I think back, I remember the sacrifices employees have made to help our business get where it is today.

In the early days, we were taking out loans and tapping our bank accounts to buy servers. When customers started asking for more features and functionality in the portal, developers coded non-stop to make it happen. A lot of those sacrifices aren’t very obvious from the outside, but we wouldn’t be where we are today without them. One of the biggest sacrifices SLayers make is when we need to build new data centers to accommodate customer demand … A “Go Live Crew” of employees moves away from their friends and family to those facilities to make sure the new SoftLayer data center meets our high expectations.

In the military, a soldier will “earn his/her stripes” by doing something that shows that he or she deserves a particular rank or position. The more stripes on the sleeve of your uniform, the higher your rank. As you’ve probably gathered from pictures and videos around the office, SoftLayer employees don’t wear uniforms, but SLayers love to wear SoftLayer swag, and this “mechanic” shirt has been one of the most popular sellers in our company store:

We wanted to recognize the employees that have given weeks (and sometimes months) of their time to join a Go Live Crew for a data center build-out, so we took that popular shirt and added a little flair. Following the “earn your stripes” idea, these employees have “earned their bars” for each data center they help build.

Every employee who was on a Go Live Crew in Seattle, Washington, D.C., San Jose, Singapore or Amsterdam will get shirts with location-specific graphics to recognize their contribution, and their most recent shirt will have the “bars” you see in the picture above.

As a bit of added recognition, here are the shirt recipients for each data center location:

Seattle Go Live Crew
John E., Edmund G., Robert G., Joe H., Brad L., Charles P., Joshua R., William S., Zane W.

Washington, D.C. Go Live Crew
Troy D., John E., Reed F., Edmund G., Robert G., Brad L., Charles P., Joshua R., Zane W.

San Jose Go Live Crew
Kalin D., John E., Chris F., Hector F., Edmund G., Robert G., Tim L., Russ M., Edward R., Brent R., Brandon S., Joshua Z.

Singapore Go Live Crew
Chris F., Joshua F.. Ryan G., Robert G., Hao H., Tim L., Russ M., Todd M., Kyle S., Eric V.

Amsterdam Go Live Crew
Raul A., Brian C., Elijah F., Hector F., Edmund G., Robert G., Sydney M., Stephen M., Michael P., Goran P., Mark Q., Edward R., Jason R., Brandon S., Sopheara S., Joshua Z.

And if you happened to compare the names between all five teams, you’ll notice that Robert Guerra was on every crew. You know what that means?

He has a brand new wardrobe.

CBNO.

-@lavosby

You’ve probably heard a lot about SoftLayer’s global expansion into Asia and Europe, and while the idea of geographically diversifying is impressive in itself, one of the most significant implications of our international expansion is what it’s done for the SoftLayer Network.

As George explained in “Globalization and Hosting: The World Wide Web is Flat,” our strategic objective is to get a network point of presence within 40ms of all of our users and our users’ users to provide the best network stability and performance possible anywhere on the planet. The reasoning is simple: The sooner a user gets on on our network, the quicker we can efficiently route them through our points of presence to a server in one of our data centers.

The cynics in the audience are probably yawning and shrugging that idea off as marketing mumbo jumbo, so I thought it would be good to demonstrate how the network expansion immediately and measurably improved our customers’ network experience from Asia to the United States. Just look at the traceroutes.

As you’re probably aware, a traceroute shows the “hops” or routers along the network path from an origin IP to a destination IP. When we were building out the Singapore data center (before the network points of presence were turned up in Asia), I ran a traceroute from Singapore to SoftLayer.com, and immediately after the launch of the data center, I ran another one:

Pre-Launch Traceroute to SoftLayer.com from Singapore

traceroute to softlayer.com (66.228.118.53), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  10.151.60.1 (10.151.60.1)  1.884 ms  1.089 ms  1.569 ms
 2  10.151.50.11 (10.151.50.11)  2.006 ms  1.669 ms  1.753 ms
 3  119.75.13.65 (119.75.13.65)  3.380 ms  3.388 ms  4.344 ms
 4  58.185.229.69 (58.185.229.69)  3.684 ms  3.348 ms  3.919 ms
 5  165.21.255.37 (165.21.255.37)  9.002 ms  3.516 ms  4.228 ms
 6  165.21.12.4 (165.21.12.4)  3.716 ms  3.965 ms  5.663 ms
 7  203.208.190.21 (203.208.190.21)  4.442 ms  4.117 ms  4.967 ms
 8  203.208.153.241 (203.208.153.241)  6.807 ms  55.288 ms  56.211 ms
 9  so-2-0-3-0.laxow-cr1.ix.singtel.com (203.208.149.238)  187.953 ms  188.447 ms  187.809 ms
10  ge-4-0-0-0.laxow-dr2.ix.singtel.com (203.208.149.34)  184.143 ms
    ge-4-1-1-0.sngc3-dr1.ix.singtel.com (203.208.149.138)  189.510 ms
    ge-4-0-0-0.laxow-dr2.ix.singtel.com (203.208.149.34)  289.039 ms
11  203.208.171.98 (203.208.171.98)  187.645 ms  188.700 ms  187.912 ms
12  te1-6.bbr01.cs01.lax01.networklayer.com (66.109.11.42)  186.482 ms  188.265 ms  187.021 ms
13  ae7.bbr01.cs01.lax01.networklayer.com (173.192.18.166)  188.569 ms  191.100 ms  188.736 ms
14  po5.bbr01.eq01.dal01.networklayer.com (173.192.18.140)  381.645 ms  410.052 ms  420.311 ms
15  ae0.dar01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (173.192.18.211)  415.379 ms  415.902 ms  418.339 ms
16  po1.slr01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (66.228.118.138)  417.426 ms  417.301 ms
    po2.slr01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (66.228.118.142)  416.692 ms
17  * * *

Post-Launch Traceroute to SoftLayer.com from Singapore

traceroute to softlayer.com (66.228.118.53), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  192.168.206.1 (192.168.206.1)  2.850 ms  1.409 ms  1.206 ms
 2  174.133.118.65-static.reverse.networklayer.com (174.133.118.65)  1.550 ms  1.680 ms  1.394 ms
 3  ae4.dar01.sr03.sng01.networklayer.com (174.133.118.136)  1.812 ms  1.341 ms  1.734 ms
 4  ae9.bbr01.eq01.sng02.networklayer.com (50.97.18.198)  35.550 ms  1.999 ms  2.124 ms
 5  50.97.18.169-static.reverse.softlayer.com (50.97.18.169)  174.726 ms  175.484 ms  175.491 ms
 6  po5.bbr01.eq01.dal01.networklayer.com (173.192.18.140)  203.821 ms  203.749 ms  205.803 ms
 7  ae0.dar01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (173.192.18.253)  306.755 ms
    ae0.dar01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (173.192.18.211)  208.669 ms  203.127 ms
 8  po1.slr01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (66.228.118.138)  203.518 ms
    po2.slr01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (66.228.118.142)  305.534 ms
    po1.slr01.sr01.dal01.networklayer.com (66.228.118.138)  204.150 ms
 9  * * *

I won’t dive too deep into what these traceroutes are telling us because that’ll need to be an entirely different blog. What I want to draw your attention to are a few key differences between the pre- and post-launch traceroutes:

• Getting onto SoftLayer’s network:. The first reference to “networklayer” in the pre-launch trace is in hop 12 (~187ms). In the post-launch trace, we were on “networklayer” in the second hop (~1.5ms).
• Number of hops: Pre-launch, our network path took 16 hops to get to SoftLayer.com. Post-launch, it took 8.
• Response times from the destination: The average response time from SoftLayer.com to Singapore before the launch of our network points of presence in Asia was about 417ms (milliseconds). After the launch, it dropped to an average of about ~250ms.

These traceroutes demonstrate that users in Singapore travel a much better network path to a server in one of our U.S. data centers than they had before we turned up the network in Asia, and that experience isn’t limited to users in Singapore … users throughout Europe and Asia will see fewer hops and better speeds now that the data centers and points of presence on those continents are live. And that’s without buying a server in either of those markets or making any changes to how they interact with us.

Managing a worldwide network for a worldwide customer base with thousands of different ISPs and millions of possible routes is not a “set it and forget it” endeavor, so we have a team of engineers in our Network Operations Center that focuses on tweaking and optimizing routes 24×7. Branching out into Europe and Asia introduces a slew of challenges when working with providers on the other side of the globe, but I guess it’s true: “If it were easy, everyone would do it.”

Innovate or die.

-@toddmitchell

We are closing down 2011 and beginning to prepare for a new year that is bound to be full of exciting changes and growth for our company, and in the midst of the calendar change, I’m reminded that my two-year anniversary of becoming a SLayer will be here soon too. Has time flown?! So many things have changed in the past two years, so I thought it would be fun to think about some things that have changed since my first day on the job.

To give you an idea of how things have changed in our office alone:

• Our last office had two kitchens and two microwaves. At our Alpha headquarters, we have six kitchens with twelve microwaves. It’s so nice that I don’t have to wait in line to heat up my lunches anymore.
• In the Alpha office’s main kitchen, we have a Sonic ice machine … if you aren’t from the southern part of the US, you might not know why this is so cool, but if you’ve had a Cherry Limeade delivered to your car, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
• Previously, we had to share a bathroom with a few other companies. Now we’re the only company in our building, and there are three sets bathrooms just for us.
• When I started we had four conference rooms. Now we have sixteen … Not even counting the conference rooms in our other locations!

Speaking of “other locations,” it’d probably be worthwhile to talk about about a few of bigger changes that happened outside of the walls of the Dallas office.

• When I started, SoftLayer was run by around 160 SLayers. Now we’re over 650!
• In January 2010, we were on one continent. Now we’ve added Asia and Europe presences to our foundation in North America.
• Those international presences have helped us expand our data center footprint. We had three data centers (Dallas, Seattle and Washington, D.C.) when I started. Now we have thirteen data centers around the world, and in addition to those three markets, we now have SLayers in Houston, San Jose, Singapore and Amsterdam!
• On my first day, our marketing team consisted of three people. Now we have more than fifteen people … and looking to hire more.
• Two years ago, we had around 6,000 customers. Today we have more than 25,000 customers located in over 110 countries!

I’ve been through a headquarter move, a merger, a huge network expansion and multiple product additions, but one thing that remains the same is our dedication to providing our customers with the best on-demand hosting solution in the world… and of course having fun while we are at it!

-Summer

Since I started with SoftLayer a couple of months ago, I have been asked by industry analysts, customers, interviewees and my drinking friends … ahem, I mean networking event associates, “Why did SoftLayer choose Amsterdam for its European headquarters?”

My answer has always been consistent: It’s all about the products and the people.

On the product side, having our data center on the AMS-IX gives us lightning fast connectivity to one of the biggest data exchanges in Europe. Combined with our 10GB PoPs in Frankfurt and London, it means we have minimal latency, so your customers are happy. With these arrangements, we’re able to extend the ability for customers only to pay for outbound public traffic. Did I mention that the three-tier network is up and running? Public, private and management … Okay, okay, you get it: Being in Amsterdam extends our industry leading global network.

Amsterdam is not the only game in town where we could get a great connection, though. SoftLayer wanted to make the other kinds of connections to grow a global business … connections with the right people.

It was not that not that long ago when ten guys were working out of a living room to change the way hosting was done. Now you’re reading the blog of a global company with several hundred million in turnover, and the entrepreneurial spirit is stronger than ever. SoftLayer wanted to be in a place where we could hire and conspire with other global pioneers, and with Amsterdam’s long history of creativity, innovation and global trade (not to mention Oliebollen), SoftLayer selected Amsterdam for its EMEA HQ.

This video from Don Ritzen and the Rockstart Accelerator team articulate the environment we are glad to be a part of:

With the Amsterdam data center officially online, we’ve had a chance to get out of the facility and into the community, and we are fitting right in. A couple of weeks ago, I was honored to speak at the Appsterdam Launch Party 2.0 Overwinter. The Appsterdam team is developing an infrastructure so that startups can more easily thrive and focus on what they do what they do best: innovate.

Mike Lee, mayor of Appsterdam asked all the speakers to tell the pan-European audience why we were speaking at the event and what we had to offer the developer community. For me it was an easy answer: We bring automated on demand hosting infrastructure to the community so people can focus on building great products. We also support the community with a referral program, so if developers refer clients to SoftLayer, we will pay them a generous commission … Not to mention that empowerment and innovation are core SoftLayer values, so we will continue to improve our platform so our customers can control their IT environment with the latest and greatest technologies in the industry.

Needless to say, the audience was intrigued. And I didn’t even show them what a SoftLayer pod looks like …

We’re looking at the tip of the iceberg in Europe, and we’re ecstatic about the opportunities and possibilities that await us as we build on our foothold here and continue our worldwide expansion. If you want to join a young startup-like team in Amsterdam, we want to hear from you … We’re hiring like crazy right now: SoftLayer Careers

-Jonathan

How are we already in mid-November? Did 2011 just fly by us or what? As we approach 2012, I will be celebrating my fourth anniversary with SoftLayer in our Seattle data center. Seattle was SoftLayer’s first data center outside of the Dallas area when it opened four years ago, and since then, I’ve seen the launch of Washington D.C., the Dallas HQ + DAL05, San Jose, Singapore and Amsterdam … while adding a few data centers in Houston and Dallas after the merger with The Planet last year. We’ve gone from ~15,000 servers when I started to around 100,000 servers in 13 data centers with 16 network PoPs on three different continents around the world. It’s safe to say we’ve grown.

In the four years since our Seattle facility launched, over 60% of our original team – the folks our Dallas team trained – are still here. Being part of such a huge team and watching the SoftLayer roll out data centers around the world is exciting, and seeing our customers grow with us is even better. In the midst of all of that growth, our team is always trying to figure out new technologies and techniques to share with customers to help them meet their ever-evolving needs. The goal: Give our customers total control.

One great example of this focus was our recent launch of QuantaStor Storage Servers. We teamed up with industry leader OS Nexus to bring our customers a production-ready mass storage appliance with a combined SAN and NAS storage system built into the Ubuntu Server and provides a number of system features such as snapshots, compression, remote replication and thin provisioning. A customer could use this in a number of environments from virtualized systems to video production to web and application servers, or as a backup based server. If you’re looking for a mass storage system, I highly recommend it.

If we’ve grown this much in my first four years, I can only imagine what the business will look like four years from now. A SoftLayer data center on every corner? Maybe we can get PHIL to figure out how we can put a SoftLayer pod in the space normally occupied by a coffee shop … making sure to keep as much coffee as possible, obviously.

-Bill

To quote Marva Collins, “Success doesn’t come to you, you go to it.” Since 2005, SoftLayer has consistently grown from $0 annual revenue to $350 million annual revenue, and that success hasn’t gone unnoticed. This year, we’ve been honored to win several awards based on our revenue growth percentage, how great the company is to work for, and the success of our cloud offerings, so I thought I’d share a few of those recognitions with our customers – who have fueled our success.

Company Growth
Let’s start with the awards that recognize SoftLayer for its tremendous financial success in the midst of a tough economic environment. This year, SoftLayer was recognized as one of the fastest growing companies as members of Tech Titan Fast Tech, Inc. 500/5000, Dallas 100, and Deloitte Technology 500.

Tech Titan Fast Tech recognizes the fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and clean technology companies in Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Fast Tech recipients are determined based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2008 to 2010. SoftLayer holds the #2 rank with a revenue growth percentage of 305%, calculated using the following formula [(FY'2010 Revenue- FY'2008)/ FY'2008 revenue] X 100%. SoftLayer won this award in 2008 and 2009 as well … And based on the way 2011 is looking, we’ll get another one next year.

Inc. 500/5000 ranks privately held, for-profit companies based on their revenue growth for the past 3 years. In 2010, SoftLayer ranked #155, and this year, we were #277 with a three-year revenue growth of 1,178%. The Inc 500/5000 list is also broken into industry categories and regions: SoftLayer ranked #21 in the IT Services category and #5 in Dallas.

Deloitte Technology Fast 500 lists North American companies each year based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth over a five-year period. This is the first year for SoftLayer to be on the list, and we couldn’t be more excited about it. We’re proud to hold #32 in this year’s rankings, and we have our sights set on climbing higher.

Dallas 100 winners are selected by the SMU Cox School of Business to recognize privately held companies that headquartered in Dallas Metroplex. Similar to the Inc. 500/5000, the rankings are based on revenue growth over the past three years. In 2010, we ranked #5, and this year, we moved up all the way to #1! (Where we’re supposed to be.)

SoftLayer Culture
The financial success of the company is only one metric of our overall success as a business. We wouldn’t be able to reach those amazing numbers without a great team, so when we get recognized for how amazing SoftLayer is to work for, I know we’re doing things right. SoftLayer has been recognized twice this year for being one of the Best Places to Work. Not only are we part of the Dallas Morning News “Top 100 Places to Work in DFW,” but we are among the “Best Places to Work in Texas.” That’s the kind of environment we wanted when we started the company a few short years ago. We hold the #10 spot for Mid-Size Companies on the DMN Top 100 Places to Work in DFW, and the “Best Places to Work in Texas” list will be released in February 2012.

Product Recognition
Oh, and as it turns out, amazing employees in a fantastic environment also create some of the most innovative products, so it should come as no surprise that SoftLayer was recognized earlier this year for our cloud offering: We are among the Top 100 Cloud Providers chosen by Alsbridge.

And when it comes to our dedicated hosting platform, you don’t have to look very far to see that SoftLayer is “The Best Web Hosting Company” in the industry. If you agree, you can show a little love for us by nominating and voting for us in HostReview’s 6th Annual Reader’s Choice Awards.

While we want to celebrate our achievements, we also want to use them as fuel to continue the Challenging But Not Overwhelming (CBNO) work that got us to this point. We want to take the #1 spot on all of these lists in the near future, so keep an eye out … And we’ll start looking for a bigger trophy case.

Taking over the world one data center at a time!

-@lavosby

Growing up, one of my heroes was Mohammad Ali. While I admired his athletic ability, with my scrappy build I was never going to be a boxer. What I liked the most about Ali was that he said whatever he wanted and backed up his words with action. That is what distinguished Ali from the others.

I’m sure you’ve been to job fairs and read companies’ websites where they talk about how their company encourages teamwork, employee empowerment and innovation … It’s usually right next to a picture of someone skydiving or kite boarding, right? Well I’ve been with SoftLayer for about a month now, and as you saw from my 3 Bars 3 Questions interview, I spent my first two weeks on the job in Dallas.

I can tell you without hesitation (and with no need for a kite boarding picture) that when you walk around the office in Dallas, you can feel a buzz in the hallways … An energy that only comes from from people who are passionate and work well together. When I made the trek back to Amsterdam, I knew the environment and culture our team in Europe would need to foster to earn our three bars.

Last week, we had our first Truck Day in the new Amsterdam data center, and it was a perfect opportunity to show off the SoftLayer spirit and work ethic to our newest AMS01 SLayers with the help of the Go Live Crew:

As soon as two large truckloads of servers were delivered, the team jumped into action. We unpacked, sorted, scanned and racked the servers in record time, and it was actually a lot fun. When I walked into the data center the next day, it felt like Christmas: new toys, flashing lights and Barbara Striesand.

It’s safe to say that SoftLayer is the Mohammed Ali of hosting. We make bold statements and can back up them up!

If you’re interested in joining the SoftLayer team in Amsterdam, we’re hiring for several different positions right now, and we’d love to have you join us. When talking to prospective employees in interviews, I always tell the SoftLayer story with Ali-like pride, and moving forward, Truck Day is going to be a perfect example to share. Where else are you going to find a company culture where everyone in the company (even the CEO) celebrates the company’s continued growth by helping to unpack and sort hardware?

Based on the conversations I’ve had since Truck Day, I can tell if they are right for the team simply by their reaction to that story. If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves to help out your teammates and have fun doing it, call me.

-@jpwisler