SoftLayer Launches CloudLayer Suite

Combining a public and private network in a "hybrid" infrastructure is all the rage these days. But it's nothing new for SoftLayer, which has been using this approach since the company was founded in 2005.

Although the fast-growing company was an early adopter of many cloud concepts, it has taken a measured approach to developing a suite of cloud services. That changed this week as SoftLayer launched CloudLayer, which bundles the company's existing storage and content delivery offerings with a compute-on-demand service that will run virtual machines on Citrix XenServer.    

“The capabilities and vision that it takes to do cloud right is where SoftLayer has long proven its expertise,” said Lance Crosby, CEO of SoftLayer. “We aren’t jumping on the cloud bandwagon. We didn’t create CloudLayer to leverage our excess data center capacity. We developed CloudLayer because it’s a natural evolution of what we do."

CloudLayer offers customers the choice of a monthly plan or resource-based "pay as you go" billing, and leverages SoftLayer's automated service delivery platform to integrate multi-site storage and backup and CDN offering (supported by Internap's CDN network). The storage and CDN services are available now, while the CloudLayer Computing service will launch shortly, the company said.

CloudLayer services will be scalable, allowing customers to add resources as needed to handle spikes in traffic or storage requirements.

"It gives customers the IT they need, when they need it, with all of the flexibility and efficiency of on-demand IT resources without any compromise in performance, security, or control,” said Crosby.

SoftLayer is based in Plano, Texas, and operates data centers at the Dallas Informart carrier hotel, and in Internap facilities in Seattle and northern Virginia. The company has more than 5,500 customers in 110 countries, with about half based outside the United States. SoftLayer manages 21,000 customer servers, and has annual revenue of more than $75 million, the company said.