Posts Tagged ‘growth’

In October, SoftLayer’s data center in Singapore (SNG01) celebrated its first birthday, and our data center in Amsterdam (AMS01) turned one year old this week as well. In twelve short months, SoftLayer has completely transformed into a truly global operation with data centers and staff around the world. Our customer base has always had an international flavor to it, and our physical extension into Europe and Asia was a no-brainer.

At the end of 2011, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40% of our revenue was generated by companies outside of North America. Since then, both facilities have been fully staffed, and we’ve ratcheted up support in local startup communities through the Catalyst program. We’ve also aggressively promoted SoftLayer’s global IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) platform on the trade show circuit, and the unanimous response has been that our decision to go global has been a boon to both our existing and new customers.

This blog is filled with posts about SoftLayer’s culture and our SLayers’ perspectives on what we’re doing as a company, and that kind of openness is one of the biggest reasons we’ve been successful. SoftLayer’s plans for global domination included driving that company culture deep into the heart of Europe and Asia, and we’re extremely proud of how both of our international locations show the same SLayer passion and spirit. In Amsterdam, our office is truly pan-European — staffed by employees who hail from the US, Croatia, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Ireland and England. In Singapore, the SoftLayer melting pot is filled with employees from the US, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Zealand. The SoftLayer culture has flourished in the midst of that diversity, and we’re a better company for it.

All of this is not to say the last year has not been without challenges … We’ve logged hundreds of thousands of air miles, spent far too many nights in hotels and juggled 13-hour and 6-hour time zone difference to make things work. Beyond these personal challenges, we’ve worked through professional challenges of how to make things happen outside of North America. It seems like everything is different — from dealing with local vendors to adjusting to the markedly different work cultures that put bounds around how and when we work (I wish I was Dutch and had as many vacation days…) — and while some adjustments have been more difficult than others, our team has pulled through and gotten stronger as a result.

As we celebrate our first anniversary of global operations, I reflect on a few of the funny “light bulb” moments I’ve experienced. From seeing switch balls get the same awed looks at trade shows on three different continents to realizing how to effectively complete simple tasks in the Asian business culture, I’m ecstatic about how far we’ve come … And how far we’re going to go.

To infinity and beyond?

-@quigleymar

I was born and raised in Brockville, Ontario, and I’ve always been a proud Canadian. In 2000, I decided to leave my homeland to pursue career options south of the 49th parallel, so I became an active participant in Canada’s so-called “brain drain.” It’s never easy starting over, but I felt that my options were limited in Canada and that I wouldn’t find many opportunities to make an impact on a global stage.

Fast-forward to 2012. Early in the year, we were introduced to GrowLab — a leading Vancouver based accelerator — by our friends at East Side Games Studio. They seemed to have a lot of incredible stuff going on, so I planned an exploratory mission of sorts … In June, I’d visit a few Canadian cities with an open mind to see what, if anything, had changed. With the Catalyst Program‘s amazing success in the US, I hoped we could hunt down one or two Canadian startups and accelerators to help out.

I was very pleasantly surprised at what I found: A vibrant, thriving Canadian community of entrepreneurs that seemed to match or exceed the startup activity I’ve seen in Silicon Valley, Boulder, Boston, New York, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and Dubai. How times have changed! Investing in the Canadian startup scene was a no-brainer.

The Catalyst team hit the ground running and immediately started working with GrowLab and several other incredible organizations like Communitech, Ryerson University Digital Media Zone (DMZ), Innovation Factory, Extreme Startups and the Ontario Network of Excellence (ONE).

We’ll enroll startups participating in those organizations into the Catalyst Program, and we’ll provide infrastructure credits (for servers, storage and networking), executive mentoring, engineering resources and limited financial support. SoftLayer wants to become the de facto Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider for Canadian startups and startups worldwide, so this is a huge first step onto the international stage. More importantly — and on a personal level — I’m excited that we get to help new companies in Canada make a global impact with us.

As a Canadian expat, having the opportunity to give something back means a great deal to me. I see an incredible opportunity to nurture and help some of these Canadian startups take flight. SoftLayer is still an entrepreneurial company at heart, and we have a unique perspective on what it takes to build and scale the next killer app or game, so we feel especially suited to the task.

One of the Canadian entrepreneurs we’ve been working with sent us this great video produced by the Vancouver-based GROW Conference about entrepreneurship, and it immediately resonated with me, so I wanted to be sure to include it in this post:

We’ve already started working with dozens entrepreneurs in Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton and Waterloo who embody that video and have kindred spirits to my own. SoftLayer has a few Canadian ex-pats on our team, and as Catalyst moves into Canada officially, we’re all extremely proud of our heritage and the opportunity we have to help.

Some have called our foray into the Canadian market an “international expansion” of sorts, I think of it more as a “coming home party.”

-@gkdog

In the startup world, the resources you have are almost as important as your vision and your ability to execute. That simple idea fueled the creation of Catalyst, and it’s a big component of our incredible success. We’re taking the complexity (and cost) out of the hosting decision for the coolest startups we meet, and by doing so, those startups have the freedom to focus on their applications. But that’s only the beginning.

In addition to providing infrastructure, my team and I also try to introduce Catalyst participants to investors, incubators, accelerators and other startup founders. By building a strong network of experienced peers, entrepreneurs have a HUGE advantage as they’re building their businesses. The difficulty in making those introductions is that it’s such a labor-intensive process … Or I guess I should say that it *was* a labor-intensive process. Then we found YouNoodle.

YouNoodle is an online network for entrepreneurs that was founded in 2010 in San Francisco, California. The 18-person startup is built to connect entrepreneurs with people, startups, competitions and groups based on what’s relevant to each entrepreneur’s mission. What the Catalyst team has been doing in a labor-intensive fashion, YouNoodle has automated and streamlined! We had to meet these folks.

We heard that YouNoodle was putting together a start-up crawl during one of their immersion programs — they bring international entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley to learn best practices and make connections in the US market — and we jumped at an opportunity to provide the beer and sandwiches at one of the stops. If you’ve ever worked at a startup before, you know that the way to an entrepreneur’s heart is through his/her stomach, so we hoped it would be “love at first bite.”

We chatted with the YouNoodle team, and they showed us the recently released 2.0 version of Podium, the SaaS platform they built to manage the selection process for entrepreneurial competitions and challenges from organizations like Start-Up Chile, The Next Web, Intel, NASA and seven out of the top ten universities around the world. Basically, Podium enables the most talented individuals and innovative startups to rise to the top and get the opportunities they deserve.

YouNoodle was an obvious fit for Catalyst, and Catalyst was an obvious fit for YouNoodle. Other Catalyst participants could join the thriving community of entrepreneurs that YouNoodle has built, and YouNoodle could take advantage of the power of SoftLayer’s hosting platform. And by helping support YouNoodle, Catalyst gets to indirectly help even more entrepreneurs and startups … Very “meta!”

Over the past two years, YouNoodle has managed over 400 competitions which have received entries from more than 28,000 entrepreneurs around the world. They’re a key player in the acceleration of global entrepreneurship, and they share our vision of breaking down the geographic barriers to innovation. And with the momentum they’ve got now, it’s clear that they’re just getting started.

If you have a second, head over to YouNoodle.com to check out the fresh, easy-to-use interface they launched to help users discover, get inspired by and connect with like-minded individuals on a global scale.

-@PaulFord

SoftLayer has a passion for social media, online gaming and mobile application developers. We were in “startup mode” just a few years ago, so we know how much work it takes to transform ideas into a commercially viable enterprise, and we want to be the platform on which all of those passionate people build their business. To that end, we set out to find ways we could help the next generation of web-savvy entrepreneurs and digital pioneers.

About a year ago, we kicked off a huge effort to give back to the startup community. We jumped headfirst into the world of startups, incubators, accelerators, angel investors, venture capitalists and private equity firms. This was our new ecosystem. We started to make connections with the likes of TechStars and MassChallenge, and we quickly became a preferred hosting environment for their participants’ most promising and ambitious ideas. This ambitious undertaking evolved into our Catalyst Program.

When it came to getting involved, we knew we could give back from an infrastructure perspective. We decided to extend a $1,000/mo hosting credit to each Catalyst company for one full year, and the response was phenomenal. That was just the beginning, though. Beyond the servers, storage and networking, we wanted to be a resource to the entrepreneurs and developers who could learn from our experience, so we committed to mentoring and making ourselves available to answer any and all questions. That’s not just lip service … We pledged access to our entire executive team, and we made engineering resources available for problem-solving technical challenges. We’re in a position to broker introductions and provide office space, so we wanted didn’t want to pass up that opportunity.

One of the superstars and soon-to-be graduates of Catalyst is MODX, and they have an incredible story. MODX has become leading web content management platform (#4 open source PHP CMS globally) by providing designers, developers, content creators and Unix nerds with all the tools they need to manage, build, protect and scale a web site.

Back in December 2011, the MODX team entered the program as a small company coming out of the open source world, trying to figure out how to monetize and come up with a viable commercial offering. Just over 10 months later, the company has grown to 14+ employees with a new flagship product ready to launch later this month: MODX Cloud. This new cloud-hosting platform, built on SoftLayer’s infrastructure, levels the playing field allowing users to scale and reach everyone with just a few clicks of a mouse and not need to worry about IT administration or back-end servers. Everything associated with managing a web site is fully automated with single-click functionality, so designers and small agencies can compete globally.

We’re proud of what the MODX team has accomplished in such a short period of time, and I would like to think that SoftLayer played a significant role in getting them there. The MODX tag line is “Creative Freedom,” and that might be why they were drawn to the Catalyst Program. We want to “liberate” entrepreneurs from distractions and allow them to focus on developing their products – you know, the part of the business that they are most passionate about.

I can’t wait to see what comes out of Catalyst next … We’re always looking to recruit innovative, passionate and creative startups who’d love to have SoftLayer as a partner, so if you have a business that fits the bill, let us help!

-@gkdog

A few weeks back, Kevin handed me The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk and said we should give it a read. I’m only halfway through it, but I thought I should share some of Vaynerchuk’s insights on social media with the SoftLayer blog audience while they are still fresh in my mind.

The best summary of The Thank You Economy comes straight from its pages:

“The Thank You Economy explains how businesses must learn to adapt their marketing strategies to take advantage of platforms that have completely transformed consumer culture and society as a whole.”

The book looks at how human nature hasn’t changed, but everything else has. The rise of social media is as game-changing as the radio and the television were, and that presents a combination of challenge and opportunity for businesses. In Vaynerchuk’s words, “What we call social media is not media, nor is it even a platform. It is a massive cultural shift that has profoundly affected the way society uses the greatest platform ever invented, the Internet.”

I’ve been “in the trenches” with SoftLayer’s social media presences for over a year now, and I realized that I take advantage of the fundamental openness of the company. Vaynerchuk urges businesses to dive into social media, and he shares some of most common reasons companies aren’t getting involved — I could list all eleven reasons here, but you’d probably recognize them all as excuses you’ve heard.* The common theme: People (and companies) fear uncertainty, and while that fear is understandable, it shouldn’t be paralyzing. The opportunity and necessity of engagement outweigh the excuses.

When you clear all the hurdles preventing your entrance to the world of social media, you need to execute. Vaynerchuk explains how “Cultural Building Blocks” of a company dictate that company’s success in social media, and while they aren’t exactly an Easy Bake Oven recipe to viral success, they are profound in their simplicity:

1. Begin with Yourself
2. Commit Whole Hog
3. Set the Tone
4. Invest in Employees
5. Trust Your People
6. Be Authentic

The “trust your people” and “be authentic” building blocks resonated the most when I thought of how SoftLayer’s social media is managed. The level of trust my boss has in me is both refreshing and challenging, and I find myself working harder to prove I deserve it. A cynic might read that sentence and scoff at its over-the-top positivity, but I’m as honest as I can be … And that’s an example of the challenge of being authentic. SoftLayer employees are passionate about their responsibilities and the company culture, and that kind of enthusiasm is so rare that there’s a tendency to assume that it’s manufactured.

If I see someone talking to us via social media about a bad experience at SoftLayer, I’m more concerned about changing their experience than I am about what they share with their social network. Often, when I follow up with those customers, when the problem is resolved, it’s amazing how surprised people are that someone actually took the time to make things right. I want to hear if someone has a bad experience because I take pride in turning it around. Are we “in control” of what people say about SoftLayer on social media? No. We are in control of how SoftLayer responds to what people are saying about us, though.

Your business needs to be active in social media.

You don’t need a “social media team” or a budget or a strategy … You need to be passionate about your employees, customers and products, and you need to make time to reach out to your community — wherever they are.

What roadblocks have you run into when it comes to your business’s social media engagement? If you’ve been successful, what tips could you share with me (and the rest of the SoftLayer audience)?

-Rachel

*If you’re toying with the idea of social media engagement or you’re working for a company that hasn’t embraced it yet, it’s worth it for you to buy The Thank You Economy to read how @garyvee dismantles those excuses.

The Catalyst startup incubator has been running at full-throttle for a while now, and I’ve been blown away by the killer startups that have joined the program. The best part of my job is meeting entrepreneurs who see a need in the marketplace and have a vision for how to meet that need in a targeted way, and the story behind Dudepins — one of the startups in Catalyst — is a perfect example of that kind of thinking. Their goal: Macho visual bookmarking.

Pinterest has been getting a lot of attention since 2011, but it still hasn’t really been able to penetrate the male demographic; maybe because it’s been so effective at cultivating content around fashion, recipes, DIY home ideas and cute puppies (Watch College Humor’s “The Fall of Pinterest,” and you’ll see what I mean). The Dudepins team noticed an unmet demand for a male-oriented visual bookmarking site, and they seized the opportunity to build that platform.

Their Formula: 2 dudes + 2 computers + 1 idea + infinite scotch – non-infinite income = Dudepins!

I fired off a few questions to the Dudes at Dudepins to get a little insight into how they built their business and what they’d recommend to other entrepreneurs in the same position … They did not disappoint:

I hate to cut the Q&A short, but TechStars Boulder Demo Day is starting, and I have to go meet the next class of future SoftLayer customers!

If you’ve got a brilliant, creative, innovative or otherwise awesome startup, and you think Catalyst could be a good fit for you, make sure you hit us up from the “Apply” page on the SoftLayer Catalyst site.

-@PaulFord

I’ve been working in the web hosting industry for nearly five years now, and as is the case with many of the professionals of my generation, I grew up side by side with the capital-I Internet. Over those five years, the World Wide Web has evolved significantly, and it’s become a need. People need the Internet to communicate, store information, enable societal connectivity and entertain. And they need it 24 hours per day, seven days a week. To affirm that observation, you just need to look at an excerpt from a motion submitted to the Human Rights Council and recently passed by the United Nations General Assembly:

The General Session … calls upon all States to promote and facilitate access to the Internet and international cooperation aimed at the development of media and information and communications facilities in all countries.

After a platform like the Internet revolutionizes the way we see the world, it’s culturally impossible to move backward. Its success actually inspires us to look forward for the next world-changing innovation. Even the most non-technical citizen of the Internet has come to expect those kinds of innovations as the Internet and its underlying architecture have matured and seem to be growing like Moore’s Law: Getting faster, better, and bigger all the time. The fact that SoftLayer is able to keep up with that growth (and even continue innovating in the process) is one of the things I admire most about the company.

I love that our very business model relies on our ability to enable our customers’ success. Just look at how unbelievably successful companies like Tumblr and HostGator have become, and you start to grasp how big of a deal it is that we can help their businesses. We’re talking billions of pageviews per month and hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on SoftLayer through our customers. And that’s just through two customers. Because we’re on the cutting edge, and we provide unparalleled access and functionality, we get to see a lot of the up-and-coming kickstarts that are soon to hit it big, and we get to help them keep up with their own success.

On a personal level, I love that SoftLayer provides opportunities for employees. Almost every department has a career track you can follow as you learn more about the business and get a little more experience, and you’re even able to transition into another department if you’re drawn to a new passion. I recently move to the misty northwest (Seattle) when given the opportunity by SoftLayer, and after working in the data center, I decided to pursue a role as a systems administrator. It took a lot of hard work, but I made the move. Hard work is recognized, and every opportunity I’ve taken advantage of has been fulfilled. You probably think I’m biased because I’ve done well in the organization, and that might be a fair observation, but in reality, the opportunities don’t just end with me.

One of my favorite stories to share about SoftLayer is the career path of my best friend, Goran. I knew he was a hard worker, so I referred him to the company a few years ago, and he immediately excelled as an Operations Tech. He proved himself on the Go-Live Crew in Amsterdam by playing a big role in the construction of AMS01, and he was promoted to a management position in that facility. He had been missing Europe for the better part of a decade, SoftLayer gave him a way to go back home while doing what he loves (and what he’s good at).

If that Goran’s story isn’t enough for you, I could tell you about Robert. He started at SoftLayer as a data center tech, and he worked hard to become a systems administrator, then he was named a site manager, then he was promoted to senior operations manager, and now he’s the Director of Operations. You’ll recognize him as the guy with all of the shirts in Lance’s “Earn Your Bars” blog post from December. He took every rung on the ladder hand-over-hand because no challenge could overwhelm him. He sought out what needed to be done without being asked, and he was proactive about make SoftLayer even better.

I could tell you about dozens of others in the company that have the same kinds of success stories because they approached the opportunities SoftLayer provided them with a passion and positive attitude that can’t be faked. If being successful in an organization makes you biased, we’re all biased. We love this environment. We’re presented with opportunities and surrounded by people encouraging us to take advantage of those opportunities, and as a result, we can challenge ourselves and reach our potential. No good idea is ignored, and no hard work goes unrecognized.

I’m struggling to suppress the countless “opportunity” stories I’ve seen in my tenure at SoftLayer, but I think the three stories above provide a great cross-section of what it looks like to work for SoftLayer. If you like being challenged (and being rewarded for your hard work), you might want to take this opportunity to see which SoftLayer Career could be waiting for you.

When opportunity knocks, let it in.

-Hilary

Last week, SoftLayer was featured on the NOS national news here in the Netherlands in a segment that allowed us to tell our story and share how we’re settling into our new Amsterdam home. I’ve only been a SLayer for about nine months now, and as I watched the video, I started to reflect on how far we’ve come in such a surprisingly short time. Take a second to check it out (don’t worry, it’s not all in Dutch):

To say that I had to “hit the ground running” when I started at SoftLayer would be an understatement. The day after I got the job, I was on a plane to SoftLayer’s Dallas headquarters to meet the team behind the company. To be honest, it was a pretty daunting task, but I was energized at the opportunity to learn about how SoftLayer became largest privately owned hosting company in the world from the people who started it. When I look back at the interview Kevin recorded with me, I’m surprised that I didn’t look like a deer in the headlights. At the time, AMS01 was still in the build-out phase, so my tours and meetings in DAL05 were both informative and awe-inspiring.

When I returned to Europe, I was energized to start playing my role in the company’s new pursuit of its global goals.

It didn’t take long before I started seeing the same awe-inspiring environment take place in our Amsterdam facility … So much so that I’m convinced that at least a few of the “Go Live Crew” members were superhuman. As it turns out, when you build identical data center pods in every location around the world, you optimize the process and figure out the best ways to efficiently use your time.

By the time the Go Live Crew started packing following the successful (and on-time) launch of AMS01, I started feeling the pressure. The first rows of server racks were already being filled by customers, but the massive data center space seemed impossibly large when I started thinking of how quickly we could fill it. Most of my contacts in Europe were not familiar with the SoftLayer name, and because my assigned region was Europe Middle East and Africa — a HUGE diverse region with many languages, cultures and currencies — I knew I had my work cut out for me.

I thought, “LET’S DO THIS!”

EMEA is home to some of the biggest hosting markets in the world, so my first-week whirlwind tour of Dallas actually set the stage quite nicely for what I’d be doing in the following months: Racking up air miles, jumping onto trains, attending countless trade shows, meeting with press, reaching out to developer communities and corresponding with my fellow SLayers in the US and Asia … All while managing the day-to-day operations of the Amsterdam office. As I look back at that list, I’m amazed how the team came together to make sure everything got done.

We have come a long way.

As I started writing this blog, BusinessReview Europe published a fantastic piece on SoftLayer in their July 2012 magazine (starting on page 172) that seems to succinctly summarize how we’ve gotten where we are today: “Innovation Never Sleeps.”

Our first pod is almost full of servers humming and flashing. When we go to tradeshows and conferences throughout Europe, people not only know SoftLayer, many of them are customers with servers in AMS01. That’s the kind of change we love.

The best part of my job right now is that our phenomenal success in the past nine months is just a glimmer of what the future holds. Come to think of it, we’re going to need some more people.

-@jpwisler

When I started at SoftLayer, I had no idea what to expect. As I walked from the parking lot to the front doors at SJC01, I started to get nervous … I felt was like I was stepping onto a stage, and I was worried about making a mistake. I took a deep breath and walked in.

Now that I look back on my first day (which was about a month ago), I have to laugh at my nervousness. I’m not sure what I expected to encounter, but the environment I entered was probably the most welcoming and friendly I’ve ever seen. Two of my coworkers, Cuong and Jonathan, recently shared their experiences as SBTs in San Jose, but because I have some recent first-hand experience that’s still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d share my own perspective.

If I were able to talk to myself as I nervously approached the San Jose data center on my first day, this is what I’d say:

As you’d expect from any new job, your first day at work involves a lot of learning (and paperwork). You’re probably chomping at the bit to get out into the data center to start building servers, but you need to crawl before you walk. The first thing you need to do is get the lay of the land … You get a guided tour of the office, the data center and your workspace. Even if you’ve worked in a data center before, you’re going to be surprised and impressed with how everything is set up. Once all of your paperwork is in order, you start learning about SoftLayer’s business and how you contribute to the customer experience. Once you understand the big picture, you can get into the details.

You’re given a training guide that goes over many of the processes and procedures that are followed on a day-to-day basis in the data center, and you’re shown all of the components you’ll be working with as you build, upgrade and manage server hardware. You might not be performing much work on hardware in production in your first few days, but you’re going to learn a lot and have plenty of time to ask questions. While you’re learning how to perform your work tasks, you’re building friendships with your coworkers, and you’re officially becoming part of the SoftLayer family. Your fellow SLayers support you and help you make sure SoftLayer’s customers are getting the service they expect.

You’re taught everything you need to know, from staying organized and focused to best practices around working with servers. You have nothing to be nervous about.

I’ve only been with SoftLayer for a short period of time, but I can confidently say that working here is remarkable. I don’t feel like an “employee;” I feel like a team player. I feel like everyone is on the same page about what needs to be done in the data center, and whenever questions come up, answers are given quickly.

I’m excited to come to work every day. I would have never dreamed I’d feel this way because I was always told jobs are long and drag-out boring, but my experience has been the polar opposite. Now, When any of my friends complain about getting up and going to work, I recommend they visit http://www.softlayer.com/about/careers.

-Jackie

The last few months have been extremely busy for SoftLayer Asia. SLayers from our Singapore office have been participating in all kinds of events — from small developer group meetups to massive conferences like CommunicAsia 2012 that brought in 35,000+ attendees from the APAC region’s major markets, and our goal has been the same throughout: SoftLayer has the platform on which our customers can build the future.

Web Hosting Days 2012 – Bangkok, Thailand

While our goal to help our customers “build the future” might seem like a tall order, the market in Asia needs the capabilities that only SoftLayer is able to provide. With the recent boom in smartphones and the growth of the region’s huge network of connectivity infrastructure, Asian companies with global customer bases are facing an exciting market with a great deal of promise. In 2012 alone, analyst group Canalys forecasts:

• An estimated 253.57 million smartphones in APAC in 2012 alone (compared to 224.08 million in North America).
• APAC smartphone penetration is expected to exceed that of North America by 13%.

While that technology market is attractive, many business owners find that it can be equally intimidating. That sentiment is one the biggest reasons our customers share when we ask why they chose to to trust SoftLayer’s SNG01 data center with their data. They need a platform that provides stability and on-demand scalability at an affordable price point, and they’ve seen SoftLayer deliver on all of those needs.

SoftLayer CMO Simon West presenting at Cloud Asia 2012

You might think that having a foundation of the best technology platform in a technology-focused market guarantees success when it comes to launching social and Internet-based businesses, but that’s only part of the story. The most important aspect of our customers’ successes have been the creative, innovative solutions that they’ve been able to build because they’re not worried about whether their infrastructure can keep up with their ideas. In Asia’s crowded technology-centric market, a company’s primary concern should be continuously meeting the needs of its rapidly evolving and growing customer base, and that’s what we want to empower. Here are a few examples of SoftLayer customers we’ve seen that embody that mentality:

• Tandif is an Indonesian based company that provides accurate and efficient auto-moderation of any web property connected to the Internet. Tandif’s service is available in English and Bahasa Indonesia, one of the most vibrant internet and social media growth markets on a regional and global scale.
• Wildby is a start up from the Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (regional affiliate of the Techstars program) that launched an application to addresses a region’s unique technology need. Many parents are “guilty” of handing over their tablets or smartphones to entertain their kids in the car as they sit out the many crazy traffic jams in our major cities. Wildby’s “edu-tainment” app allows children aged 3 to 7 yrs visually interact and learn new words and concepts anywhere they have access to the app.
• Qyro — another JFDI graduate — was founded by an international team of entrepreneurs to build a patent-pending enterprise-based solution called Stubb, which provides users full-featured virtual document sharing and controls over both hard and soft copies.

Each of these companies has been very successful in their respective markets, and they’re looking to SoftLayer to help them expand their business footprint in Asia to reach customers in North America and Europe. They absolutely love what our private network means for those goals: Geographic boundaries are blurred. Why is that important? Just how global is the Asian market?

Southeast Asia alone takes center stage when it comes to global adoption of the world’s most popular Internet properties:

• Indonesia, India and Philippines are part of the top 10 markets for Facebook users’ growth, with Indonesia ranking #2 worldwide.
• 21% of Indonesian online users visited Twitter.com in January 2011, making it the fourth highest country in terms of Twitter reach.
• Malaysia is the #1 country in Southeast Asia when it comes to Foursquare user base (the USA is 167 positions lower)!

Needless to say, given the opportunity here and the passionate entrepreneurs trying to take advantage of it, SoftLayer Asia is going to be extremely busy for a long time.

-Dionne