What language do we speak here at Softlayer? What language is spoken across the industry? Is it the same, or does everyone have their own code for translation?

It seems that in the “on demand datacenter industry”, “hosting industry”, “dedicated server industry” (or whatever you prefer to call it) each company or provider has its own idea and way of projecting who they are. These projections are seldom in line with one another and have a slight difference only to give some idea of separation.

The biggest grey area that I have seen and something that gets distorted is the idea of managed services and just the term “management” in general seems to have lost any kind of universal meaning. The thing that I run into most is when a customer asks us if we are a managed company. I find this to be a loaded question knowing what I know of the industry and other providers. The reason is that you can call your service anything you want to and even come up with clever and creative names for it, but at the end of the day creative marketing doesn’t get results when the rubber meets the road.

It is imperative that the correct expectations are set so that customers aren’t lead astray and find themselves in a situation that they were unprepared for because they were disillusioned by gimmicky wording. Softlayer has the reputation of being an honorable company and I am proud to be a part of that. We do not consider ourselves to be a managed service, but we do offer support and help in many situations. We have support staff here 24 hours every day of the year that can help you, or possibly help point you in a good direction for you to be able to help yourself. We offer OS updates and patches at no additional charge automatically. We strive to be as upfront and fair on everything from the bottom to the top, so I feel that it is my duty to explain this situation in more detail. In fact, all of our sales representatives and many of our customers have felt this same way. What I have found is that this upfront and honest explanation is a rarity and that many companies are not as forthcoming as they could be or should be when discussing “managed services”.

There are a lot of companies who provide the exact same services as we do and call this being “fully managed”. There are others who promise the moon and a shoe shine with their service and then just come up short on the efforts. Now, this may not be entirely their fault because they may have excellent intentions, but a poor and impractical business model. However, intentions don’t get results and customers are the ones who pay most for the misrepresentation. The worst situation is when someone pays a huge premium for a service that is overpromised and then severely under delivered. When I am able to talk to someone who has been in this situation they really appreciate the options and control that they have over every aspect of their service when choosing Softlayer as their provider. The only satisfaction I can get is helping people that have been taken advantage of find a provider that they know they can count on and exactly what they can expect.

This elaboration of services extends beyond server management. No matter what buzz words a company may want to use to describe your company (“largest”, “best”, “heroic”, “ultimate”, really just fill in the blank on this if you’ve been around long enough.) the main thing that matters in this industry is functionality. I am confident in saying that no other company can offer anything close to what Softlayer can provide. Softlayer provides options and capabilities which are unparalleled in the industry in order to give customers complete control over their hardware and thus their own business. There are some that have tried to copy our model and others who have tried to produce a stop-gap solution between what they offer and what we offer, but they have failed. Is this, perhaps, a key reason why we have been able to sustain our high level of growth and remain stable? Possibly. Is this a sign that the best is yet to come with Softlayer? Definitely.

If you want to talk about situations or projects you may have coming up, I would be happy to speak with you and help come up with a solution that will maximize your businesses potential. In fact my entire team is here for this specific purpose.

I know this is an overdue rebuttal, but I have to stick up for myself here. Recently it has been brought up the high five and the fist bump pro’s and cons. I am here to shed new light on the matter which will provide a feasible alternative, but at the same time bring respect to all no matter what form you like to bring it.

Lets review:

The high five is a cornerstone of cool. It is the revolutionary leader in which we should pay homage because without it we wouldn’t have this conversation in the first place. God only knows when the high five was invented, but even then he must have been impressed. So in the interest of staying positive let’s stick with the pro’s of the high five.

• A high five can be a good alternative to anything else because of range and when height is a factor (especially over a cube wall).
• The high five is versatile in different levels and angles that it can be applied from. It can even go inverted (see explanation of “low five” in blogs to come)
• The high five is not likely to spur on a game of bloody knuckles or other such contests of pain thresholds even as invigorating as they can be.
• The high five is universal and you can take it all over the world. (see Borat, he’ll tell you all about it)
• The high five can be seen in many instances throughout the movie “TOP GUN”. Especially in the brotherhood of “Maverick” and “Goose”. I don’t care who you are or how old you are TOPGUN is still one of the coolest movies around and the high fives used in the movie just help make it that much cooler. Also, as a side note, if you didn’t feel remotely bad when Goose died in the movie you have no soul and can probably stop reading at this point.
• Above all the high five has withstood a test many popular things haven’t or won’t; the test of time.

So now that we have elaborated on why the high five is not the evil empire of office camaraderie, but in fact a form of communication to be respected and treasured, we can move onto the fist bump. The fist bump is more recent. It’s hip, it’s now, it’s from the streets. You can do kewl little things like “lock it up” or “blow it up”. They perform a fist pump out of sign of respect before any boxing match or other fight. Some believe it to be a sign of strength or superiority. I find it simply to be a solid alternative to be used to keep things fresh when pumping up the colleagues. For more on the positive promise of the fist bump please note our CEO’s perfectly mannered and unbiased point of view of the subject in an earlier blog.

Taking it to the next level people have suggested the chest bump. However, I don’t have a lot to say about this one because I don’t know when it’s ever really ok to get that close to someone else in the office and we’ll just leave it at that.

OK, so after all this. I have a suggestion to include the elbow into the repertoire. Names that have been thrown out have been simply “the elbow” and the “e-dap”. If stating that the fist bump is a sign of strength and thus making it good the elbow bump or other connection has to be the next logical form of enthusiasm.

• No set of bones in the human body are as strong as the elbow (the thigh could claim some contention, but we’re not touching that with a really long pole) and nothing can be as impactful as a well placed “forearm shivva”.
• In the heyday of steroids in baseball it was the en vogue way of celebrating. At no other point in time was neither baseball nor the players stronger than during the reign of “the elbow”.
• In entertainment disguised as sport in wrestling “The Rock” (name spurred on from a symbolism of strength) had a favorite move called “The People’s Elbow”. It was aptly named for the people because of its popularity.
• The Elbow has an outreach so wide that Michael Miller of the sales department often speaks of “The Flying Elbow” inspired by the Macho Man Randy Savage.

The fist bump is still quite popular now, but with all of this evidence available I implore upper management to cease its discrimination of other forms of enthusiasm. Please broaden your horizons to accept new ways as well as classic ways of expressing ones pride in celebration. After all people of one mind and one spirit working for one goal cannot be wrong in any form of celebration as victory is achieved.

Softlayer is a very unique company. It is a rare find and it is a pleasure to be associated with this company. I certainly hope our customers feel the same way (and if you don’t, please talk to us so we can make our service with you more valuable). I am a Senior Sales Representative at SL and I would like to give you more of a behind the scenes feel for why we are the best sales staff in the industry.

I am a people pleaser, and I truly love to help people find satisfaction. I have had several sales positions since I graduated from college many years ago. The thing those previous sales positions had in common was that the salesman was incented to take his own needs into consideration first and foremost. This directly conflicts with what I want to accomplish in business. It is understood that everyone goes into business not to play Barbie dolls, but to earn a profit. Still, this seems fundamentally wrong to me. I have direct experience (even in this industry) where sales positions are incented to put their own needs and wants before those of the customer, or even the company they are working for. This misappropriation of incentive or motivation can cause any number of scenarios that are bad for business on both sides. Luckily this is not how things are done at Softlayer. The customer’s needs come first, as it should be.

The main reason why I came to Softlayer was because of the way that its sales staff is designed. We are put together as a team, for the customer’s benefit. Customers do not need to worry about working with a single individual sales person unless they simply prefer to. I know that I prefer to build up business relationships because this makes for a good understanding of what the main goals are for each customer, and I can have a better grasp of what I can personally do to help. We are not individually commissioned so customers can rest assured knowing that we are doing everything possible to put them in the best situation imaginable. This allows us to avidly search for those “win – win” situations that are positive for everyone involved.

The Softlayer Sales staff is also very diverse in the styles and talents that we offer. Everyone here has had several years of industry experience and is quite knowledgeable about not only product lines, but also the businesses of our customers. I would go so far as to say that we have the most knowledgeable staff in the industry.
The bottom line is that an intelligent sales staff working for the right reasons ends up with satisfied customers. Satisfied customers are inclined to do more business with a company, and a positive culture between the company and customer is created as opposed to a negative one where it seems that there is always a disparity between the two.

Because of the culture we have created here, it makes me happy to come to work each day.