Your Own Private Data Center

It’s undeniable – cloud computing and virtualized environments have evolved into enterprise-worthy infrastructure solutions.  But for enterprises, putting their data at risk on shared public servers still presents a security challenge they can’t overlook.  From our experiences working with enterprises of all sizes, we know that while they all have different business goals, they all have the same cloud environment needs: enterprise-class security, choice and flexibility.

To address enterprises’ concerns and strengthen cloud security, Layered Tech has developed a new Virtual Private Data Center (VPDC) platform that delivers a virtualized environment on servers dedicated to individual enterprise customers – in other words, customers aren’t sharing resources, which reduces their risk profile.  Our customers using the new platform will receive levels of managed services, security and flexibility via a proprietary API previously unavailable in an integrated offering.

While putting everything on the cloud might not necessarily be the best option, companies still want the cloud’s benefits, which is why we created this platform to offer enterprises a hybrid cloud computing approach that delivers the best of both worlds – traditional dedicated hosting and cloud computing.  To meet constantly changing enterprise needs, the virtualized platform gives customers the reliability and security of dedicated servers with the flexibility and scalability of virtual machines.

But what can this platform really do for your business?  Let’s break it down:

RELIABILITY:  You get the reliability and control of dedicated servers from your VPDC platform that operates exclusively within Layered Tech data centers.

CHOICE:  You can choose the virtualization platform that best suits your needs, including 3Tera’s AppLogic, VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V, because our VPDC offering is technology-agnostic.

FLEXIBILITY:  With our automated server provisioning system, enterprise customers can design, order and deploy a secure virtualized environment within an hour, instead of the weeks or months it can take many on-premise data centers to provision a similar solution.

CUSTOMIZATION:  Developers will have more than 100 applications immediately available to them through the new API; those developers then have access to the API for customizing additional applications of their choice.

SUPPORT SERVICES:  You can choose from a range of support options with the new VPDC platform’s tiered managed services, which lets you focus on managing your business, not your VPDC.  Support ranges from fully managed by Layered Tech to self-managed options with varying levels in between.

To learn more about the new VPDC platform, which will be available later in Q1 2010, click here!

Welcome to 2010!

Let’s kick off the New Year by sharing some industry insight about expected IT trends and the initiatives most likely to dominate IT budgets in 2010, according to Enterprise Systems Journal.  Their first newsletter of 2010 says businesses will increasingly adopt cloud computing and virtualization as viable and cost-effective infrastructure strategies.  It also weighs public vs. private clouds and discusses which meets business needs best.  And along with new technologies and strategies comes the need to adjust security practices to keep mission-critical data secure, while managing applications to meet end-user’s performance standards.

To highlight the private cloud trend, the Enterprise Systems’ newsletter includes an article authored by Layered Tech President and Founder Todd Abrams, called “Clouds in 2010: Will Yours Be Lined With Silver or Filled with Coal Dust?”  Todd shares his 2010 predictions for cloud computing’s growth and enterprise usage, all fueled by operational and financial improvements.  He discusses the advantages of private clouds for enterprise control and security and explains the value created by managed private cloud services.  For enterprises looking to better align IT solutions with overall corporate business needs, Todd advocates custom migration plans and says that successful enterprises will take a more holistic approach to their infrastructure.  Check out the entire article here!

Other interesting articles include:

• Five IT Focal Points for 2010
• Security Trends in 2010
• Q&A: Understanding Private vs. Public Clouds
• Q&A: Application Performance Management and the End User

To the West Coast and Beyond!

Layered Tech’s facility investments expand our global presence and increase connectivity

Recently, we expanded our data center portfolio while significantly increasing our footprint and Internap connectivity at our core facilities.  These investments further strengthen our ability to provide flexible solutions and highly reliable managed hosting services that meet even the most complex enterprise customer requirements.

We added a new data center in Santa Clara, Calif., to meet the rapidly growing demand from Silicon Valley customers.  This new location expands our presence and also adds another level of geographic redundancy for customers interested in a West Coast location.  Since establishing the facility this year, we’ve already added another 10 Gb of Internap connectivity, bringing total Santa Clara bandwidth to 20 Gb, as well as transport supplied by other providers.

In addition to our new West Coast facility and its upgrades, we’ve strategically expanded our core data centers to rack even more servers and address customers’ growing needs.  We doubled the footprint in the Databank Dallas facility and nearly tripled the footprint in the Coresite Chicago facility.  Our expanded Coresite footprint not only meets the local demand, but also addresses the growing number of national and international companies that want a Chicago presence and are attracted by the data center’s downtown location.

We also added an additional 10 Gb of Internap bandwidth to each of our core data centers, located in Dallas, Chicago and Cedar Falls, Iowa.  While we use a diverse mix of providers for industry-leading quality connectivity, Internap now provides 70 Gb of connectivity to Layered Tech data centers.  Our Internap relationship helps ensure that customers will get the same high level of service, connectivity and flexibility in each of our data centers, even if they choose to move from one Layered Tech facility to another.

Find out more!

Layered Tech Named to Inc. 5000

We are pleased to announce that Layered Tech ranked No. 622 on the 2009 Inc. 5000, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies by Inc. magazine.

Inc. magazine ranked companies according to percentage of revenue growth from 2005 through 2008.  To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of 2005, be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent as of Dec. 31, 2008.  Revenue in 2005 must have been at least $200,000, and revenue in 2008 must have been at least $2 million.

We earned a spot in the top 12 percent because of our three-year growth rate of 441 percent.  We also are excited to rank No. 22 on the DFW list and No. 81 on the IT services industry list.  We’ve evolved from an emerging dedicated hosting company to a recognized Web hosting provider whose scalable infrastructure powers millions of sites and a wide array of Internet-enabled applications.  While we measure our success by serving our customers’ evolving needs, this recognition is a testament to our strong market position.  Our Inc. 5000 company profile is available here.

Inc. shared some other interesting facts:

• Texas had the second highest number of Inc. 5000 companies with 393; California led the list with 612 companies.
• IT Service companies dominated this year’s list with 658 making the cut.
• Despite the ongoing recession, aggregate revenue among the companies on the list actually increased to $214 billion, up $29 billion from last year, with a median three-year growth rate of 126 percent.
• The Inc. 5000 are responsible for creating more than 1 million jobs since their founding, making the list one of the best examples of the impact private, fast-growing companies can have on the economy.

Complete results of the Inc. 5000 can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/index.html.

Layered Tech is named to the 2009 Tech Titans Fast Tech List, which ranks the fastest-growing technology companies in North Texas

Layered Tech is excited to share that it has been named to the 2009 Tech Titans Fast Tech Five Year Listing by the Metroplex Technology Business Council (MTBC), the largest technology trade organization in Texas.  The Tech Titans Fast Tech Award annually recognizes the fastest-growing technology companies in the DFW Metroplex, based on percentage of revenue growth during five-year or one-year periods.

North Texas is one of the nation’s technology epicenters, and Layered Tech was listed among powerhouses such as AT&T and emerging leaders like MetroPCS.  As our CEO Jack Finlayson commented in our July 29 news release, “Layered Tech is pleased to be mentioned alongside other DFW-area technology providers and to be recognized for the technology innovation and growth that our team has worked so hard to achieve.”

The Tech Titans Fast Tech listing recognizes technology companies that have experienced significant revenue growth from 2004 to 2008.  This year, 63 nominations were received, and Layered Tech met the requirements along with 37 other finalists.  Our double-digit growth rate is driven by our ability to meet customers’ needs by continually evolving, enhancing and broadening our solution sets with an emphasis on automated solutions that create operational and cost efficiencies for our customers and Layered Tech.

While we measure our performance by contributing to our customers’ success, industry recognition like the Tech Titans Fast Tech Award reflects our strong market position.  As a winner in the five-year growth category, we are eligible for the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, which recognizes the 500 fastest-growing technology companies in the U.S. and Canada.

In addition to financial growth, to qualify for the ranking, companies must own proprietary technology such as our automated Astro solution that dramatically accelerates the availability and provisioning of servers for customers and channel partners alike.

The ranking of the 2009 five-year and one-year lists will be announced at the annual Tech Titans/Fast Tech Awards Gala Event on Aug. 28, 2009 at the Renaissance Hotel Dallas-Richardson in Richardson, Texas.  More information about the event is available at www.metroplextbc.org/techtitans.