I was talking with a friend about memory on computers. He said he wanted a computer with tons of memory for Photoshop. I said something to the effect that I’ve never seen a desktop that can handle more than 16 GB, and that most operating systems now don’t want to handle more than that… that Windows will only give a process 4 GB max, 2 GB for the application and 2 GB shared with the operating system. He then said “I can’t imagine having to use more than 16 GB!” This immediately reminded me of Bill Gates’ famous quote, that “640K ought to be more than enough for everybody.” Striving for accuracy, I went to the Internet to find when and where he said this.

Interesting fact came up: HE NEVER SAID IT. He vehemently denies having ever uttered this phrase. Every quote I’ve seen is always un-sourced, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. So what makes this quote clog the tubes so easily?

First, the irony that a person renowned for his computer visions of the future would say something so backward causes people to smile. Secondly, there is a nugget of truth. In a 1989 speech, Bill Gates said:

“I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn’t - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem.”

Bill never said “640K is enough for everybody.” He said “640K should keep everyone happy for the next 10 years.” Turns out he was wrong. Within less than 6 years we started hitting the “640K limit”… which wasn’t a hard limit at all, it was just a limit proposed by the operating system at the time. Mr. Gates thought that 640K was generous, and in the beginning it was. But as the industry marched forward, it started cramping. Pretty soon, we had DOS memory managers, extended and expanded memory, virtual memory… we would do ANYTHING to escape the 640K limit.

So what’s the moral of this story? First, you can’t believe just anything you read on the Internet. Sometimes something gets into the tubes because it’s funny, not because it’s accurate. Secondly, predicting the computer industry is hard. To be a successful computer development company (like the portion of SoftLayer I work in), you have to be able to look to the horizon and attempt to spy the most likely location the software industry is moving in. We developers work on projects 3, 6, 9, 12 months before they’re used by our users; we have to make predictions at least double that size in advance to give growth room whilst the next tool is developed. And, I dare say, we’ve done a good job of that around here!

In conclusion, Bill Gates never said “640K should be enough for everybody.” That quote is a myth. It’s a funny joke, but a joke nonetheless. However, Bill Gates did actually say this at a Macintosh conference:

“To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination — and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.”

And this time there’s video evidence. And there’s the not-quite-quote where Bill Gates implies that Vista isn’t really the best thing since 8086 Segmented Physical Memory Models. Aren’t real quotes more humorous fake ones? I think so.

The power grids that we enjoy today did not magically appear as power generation developed during the Industrial Revolution. In 1902, according to the US Census, the country had 3,600 central systems and over 50,000 isolated power plants in large homes, hotels, and other commercial establishments. Thus, it’s a pretty safe bet that companies employed a fair amount of people who were tasked with “keeping the lights on.” For our purposes, we’ll call them the Chief Electricity Officers (CEOs).

This was the era before electricity was a utility. As we know, the power grid eventually encompassed the whole country and provided all needed electricity on tap. Once companies found that it was far more economical to plug into the grid than to generate their own power, the poor CEOs had to find other things to do in their organizations. Of course, industry regulation played a part here also, but the basic economics worked – with the grid in place, it was cheaper to buy power than do it yourself.

I see several parallels in this present Information Age. Many companies have Chief Information Officers and/or Chief Technology Officers. Part of what these folks are tasked with is IT infrastructure, i.e., acquiring the computing and networking gear required by the business and operating it in a redundantly powered and cooled data center. In most companies, IT is not the core competency of the business, yet they lay out a lot of capital expenditures and employ a lot of people for an overhead operation – much like what the old CEOs did with independent power generation.

SoftLayer and companies like us parallel the rollout of the power grid which began about a hundred years ago. In the coming years, companies will realize that the time, people, and capital expenditures required to locate data center space, find redundant power, set up backup power, install redundant HVAC systems, expend capital to acquire routers/switches/servers/storage systems/load balancers/firewalls/operating system software, and hire the people to run it all and upgrade everything every few years will be far too great a cost compared to “plugging in” to a provider such as SoftLayer. With Softlayer, IT infrastructure is our core competency. Companies need only give us a shout to instantly have IT infrastructure provided at far better economics than doing it themselves. They’re essentially “plugging in” to IT as a basic utility to be used to perform their core competency – just like they plug into the power receptacle to use electricity to help perform their core competency.

Hey, when Sun Microsystems says they’ll be out of data center operations by 2015, that raises our eyebrows around here. Dan Golding of Tier 1 research concurs that by 2015 “enterprise data centers will be in decline.” Once the business leaders of companies grasp the economics of halting their independent data center operations in favor of plugging in to utility providers, the CIOs and CTOs will have to do what the old CEOs did – find other ways to add value to their companies.

The high-pitched whine of a drill sends a shiver down my spine. I jump a little in my seat at a loud bang followed by shuffling feet and mumbled voices. I involuntarily cower at the unmistakable sound of a saw blade spinning—gaining momentum—biting. Nope, I’m not sitting in a theater watching Eli Roth’s next installment in the Hostel franchise. In fact, I’m at the office.

That’s right. I’m sitting at my desk. Sitting at my desk and trying hard to ignore the plethora of singing power tools and crooning contractors who for the last two months have been busy putting up dry wall, wiring electrical outlets, installing locks, and occasionally setting off the fire alarm. It’s the sound of growth. And at the risk of conjuring up images of bad 80’s haircuts, guys in jeans way-too-tight, and shirts where the collars just wouldn’t seem to stay down– one might dare refer to the ruckus as “growing pains”.

Make no mistake about it, growing is painful. Take it from me. I think I was 19 before I managed to grow enough facial hair to require the use of a razor. Combine that tidbit of info with the fact that I had every 8-bit computer known to man proudly on display in my room right next to my impressive collection of latex Hollywood style monster masks and you’ll start to get the picture. Growing requires a lot of work and allows almost no planning as humans have a habit of blossoming in their own sweet time. Companies are no different.

So while management did everything possible to make the required building expansion as unobtrusive as possible, well, it’s still construction work within earshot of a whole team of developers, technicians, and engineers. That’s just the way it is. And while I may complain about the noise and distractions now and again, there is also something very comforting about knowing that I am working at a place that is growing. Growing phenomenally, in a time when not all technology companies are fairing so well.
When the dust settles there will be a lot of new space.

More space means a lot of new hires. More space means more opportunity for existing employees. And yes, more space means more work for everyone involved. Having worked for three failed ventures in as many years, I can tell you I am more than happy to be putting my time and effort and energies into something that is successful; something that continues to be more successful every day. It feels good to be on the winning team for a change. Hearing what some of the other engineers here are saying I don’t think I’m alone in that sentiment.

That’s not to say I’ll miss the noise when the construction is all said and done. Which in case you are interested sounds to be winding down. As for SoftLayer, well something tells me we are just getting started.

Our CEO said “so when will our next blog post on GAHAP come out?” By GAHAP he means “generally accepted hosting accounting principles.” He asked for it, so you get it :). If GAHAP bores you, try this on your iPhone. It’s fun!

I could probably squeeze everyone left reading at this point in a Dodge Viper and we could discuss this over lunch. But SL doesn’t provide Vipers to executives so I guess I’ll post it here for you. A balance sheet by definition is a snapshot of the current financial condition of a company. Here’s a formal definition. A GAAP balance sheet simply doesn’t portray an accurate picture of the financial condition of a hosting company.

Probably the most important value that a GAAP balance sheet completely misses is the value produced by monthly recurring revenue. By implementing some sort of fair value accounting as I mentioned before this value gets captured. But on that part of the balance sheet, it still doesn’t help someone looking at the dreaded current ratio. So here’s a way to get a measure of this value that matches up to current liabilities on the balance sheet and get a current ratio that better reflects the company’s true financial position.

Since current liabilities include debt that must be paid at any time over the next 12 months, I would propose using statistics to walk forward 12 months and add “Future EBITDA from Existing Customers” as a current asset on the balance sheet. I can sense the shudders of all accountants who are reading this because you’re thinking that this completely abandons the revered principle of conservatism. In hosting, however, this can be done with conservatism in mind by employing statistics. Public accounting auditors employ statistics every day in their work, so the use of statistics is not a foreign concept to accountants.

Here’s how I’d propose hosting companies do this. First, look at the behavior of the current customer base at the beginning of each month regarding customer churn and the purchase of incremental business by remaining customers. Ignore all new customers acquired during the month and add them to the customer base for next month’s analysis. For each month over the past 12 months, analyze how much revenue is lost from customers who leave and net that from how much revenue is recognized from the existing customers who remain. The results of this analysis can be statistically boiled down to give you an idea of how much revenue will come in over the next 12 months even if you do not gain a single new customer during the next 12 months. That’s the principle of conservatism coming into play here. Let’s call this “statistically stable anticipated revenue.” By the way, at SoftLayer, the incremental business from customers who stay is greater than the business lost from customers who leave us.

Second, take a look at EBITDA margins over the past 12 months and work the statistical mojo to get an idea of EBITDA margins going forward. Multiply this margin against the statistically stable anticipated revenue to arrive at “Future EBITDA from Existing Customers.”

Third, add this category as a new line in the Current Assets portion of the balance sheet as well as adding it as a new line in the Stockholder’s Equity portion of the balance sheet. The resulting balance sheet is much closer to the true financial condition of a hosting company than a traditional GAAP balance sheet.

Why is this view more accurate? 1) A hosting company isn’t like a retail store. Like a hosting company, retail stores have repeat customers but the repeat behavior is more sporadic. The customer may decide that the weather is too bad and they’ll run out and get that new pair of shoes another day. Or the weekend may have been too hectic for a grocery store run so they’ll eat out for the next week. With hosting customers, mission-critical things live on their servers and they are usually set up on automatic monthly billings. Repeat sales are much more predictable than for customers of retail stores. This consistent cash flow has real value, and to not capture it on the balance sheet negatively distorts the financial condition of the company. 2) Putting this statistically solid future EBITDA as a current asset allows a better picture of the current ratio because it is from this EBITDA that the current portion of the company’s debt will be paid. This gives a banker, etc., a clear view of whether the company will struggle over the next year to pay them back.

Here’s how a sample summary balance sheet would look before and after this adjustment.

                                                  GAAP            "GAHAP"
Cash, A/R, Other Current Assets                $33,218,805     $33,218,805
Future EBITDA from Existing Customers                   $0     $26,575,044
Total Current Assets                           $33,218,805     $59,793,849 

Fixed Assets                                   $90,355,150     $90,355,150
Other Assets                                    $9,301,265      $9,301,265
                                             =============================
Total Assets                                  $132,875,221    $159,450,265 

Current Liabilities                            $55,807,593     $55,807,593
Long Term Liabilities                          $67,766,363     $67,766,363 

Stock, Paid in Capital, Retained Earnings       $9,301,265      $9,301,265
Future EBITDA from Existing Customers                   $0     $26,575,044
Total Stockholder's Equity                      $9,301,265     $35,876,310
                                             =============================
Total Liabilities and Stockholder's Equity    $132,875,221    $159,450,265 

Current Ratio                                         0.60            1.07

Over the last two years, SoftLayer has grown from nothing to over 10,000 servers and by the end of this year could surpass 30,000 servers if growth continues on its current track. A key component in managing this growth is finding leaders with the ability to scale as the company grows. More often than not, entrepreneurs are good at starting businesses but not good at growing them. In that vein, if you are the leader of a startup, what traits does your management team needs to have if one is to build the biggest, baddest and most valuable company in an industry?

Battle wounds: We all have read the stories about Bill Gates quitting Harvard to start Microsoft, Michael Dell selling servers out of his dorm room, and Larry and Sergey leaving Stanford to start Google. It is very rare that someone can come out of college and start something that becomes the dominant player in an industry. The majority are an amalgamation of our experiences of years of operating any one of a number of businesses. Look for the managers with some scars. Even the aforementioned entrepreneurs are pretty much battle tested by now.

Visionary: As fast as SoftLayer is growing, we better have a pretty good vision of where we are going so we don’t run this Porsche off a cliff and into an abyss. We have seen many potential customer IT managers come to us in a panic upon their sudden realization that no more servers can be added to their datacenter because of inadequate planning for power and cooling. And I am not just picking on IT; this applies to the finance function as well. As the CFO, I have to have a vision for what my organization is going to look like all along the way, from the startup phase to an IPO, merger or acquisition or whatever other path this journey takes us.

Communication skills: Today’s CFO must be more technically proficient than his predecessors; however, this does not negate for the financial or any other executive to be able to communicate not only with company staff, but customers, vendors, bankers and shareholders as well. As discussed in other blogs, the internet has given all of us the ability to communicate in so many different ways than in the past. The challenge of any manager is to figure out which method of communication is the most effective in a given situation to get the job done and keep the organization moving forward.

Je ne sais quoi: It’s a French phrase we as Americans have used over the years to refer to a certain quality someone has that cannot be explained. A good manager has to have this “Presence”. While the internet and email and all forms electronic communication have made the world smaller, to have an impact a leader still needs to be out communicating, listening and understanding to keep the team on the right track. The leader who sits in his office all day can review a lot of data but needs to get out to find what is really going on inside a company. The “Ivory Tower” manager is doomed to failure in today’s fast paced business environment.

Rock in times of adversity: For all of us who have participated in startups (and I have done four now), there are going to be tough times. You can count on that. How you react in those situations sends a message about your ability to lead to your staff. As a leader, you have to be the go-to person in tough times. Are you prepared to handle the adversity?

The team: Much like a professional hockey team (I would use football but my son plays hockey and this is my blog), you can’t do it all alone. From the general manager on down, the owner/president of a team has to have the ability to attract top notch staff to who he can delegate the work of moving the organization toward the ultimate prize in hockey, The Stanley Cup. If he can’t and tries to keeps all the work for himself, he will find himself on the outside looking in.

Do we have the team to scale? So far it appears that we do. Are we going to have to add additional leadership along the way for us to achieve our goals? Absolutely. We have just added a Chief Strategy Officer to the executive management team.

We continue to be confident our management team can provide the leadership needed to grow SoftLayer into an industry leader.

Are you as confident in your team?

- Mike Jones (Who?)

I remember when I figured out that I wanted to be different. My mother took me to see Elvis in concert a year before he died. I knew at that moment I wanted to be a part of something great.

Because of that concert I spent years learning how to play every musical instrument I could get my hands on.

Fast forward thirty something years later and I find myself working with my best friends to build the most innovative hosting company in the world.

I learned after many of my own concerts that it was “making a difference” and not a hit album that I was truly in love with. To steal a line from my favorite book, “I who knew not that I knew not, now know that I know not…and that’s progress.”

Not unlike the Beatles, SoftLayer is a phenomena that is larger than life. It’s a culture. It’s a way of life. It’s how you do business. It’s a necessity.

It is to be continued…..

I now know why Elvis left the building, it was to make room for SoftLayer.

Over the years I’ve had a chance to see a number of different organizations in operation – churches, non-profits, clubs, public companies, and private companies. I’ve found that in all these organizations, four types of people are needed in order for them to thrive.
I made this observation of four types of people about 20 years ago. I honestly don’t remember reading this from a business book or hearing it at a seminar so I don’t have a source to cite. But since there’s “nothing new under the sun” according to Ecclesiastes, I apologize in advance if you’re reading this and this list originated with you over 20 years ago.
Some may think that comfortable new buildings, plush surroundings, or artistic furnishings can help an organization thrive. I’m reminded of the IBM “Innovation Station” commercial. I couldn’t find it on their site and the best I could do elsewhere is this Italian version. The surroundings of the people are merely surface cosmetics. The people are the soul of an organization, and each one has a different mix of gifts and talents. It is this mix of gifts and talents that I sort into four groups and the people of the organization must draw from their fundamental gifts and talents for an organization to thrive, regardless of the environmental cosmetics – especially if this is your environment.

Innovators

The first group of folks is the smallest in number. They’re the innovators. They can approach a blank whiteboard, pick up a marker and brilliance flows through them onto the board. They’re so in touch with markets that they don’t just sense the needs felt by the market that need to be filled – they know the needs of the market before the market even feels these needs. The innovators cast the vision for what can be. However, if you ask them to make the vision better, deliver the vision, or maintain it after delivery, more often than not the vision will not be realized because making the vision reality is not a part of their gifts and talents. Making the vision a reality depends on folks from the other groups.

Refiners

These are some of the folks who approach a blank whiteboard and they pick up a marker, but the board remains white. It isn’t within them to come up with new and innovative solutions to market needs. But if there’s a new and innovative idea on the board, they’ll grab a marker and make it better. Maybe the original idea has a logistical problem that keeps it from being viable. They’ll solve that logistical problem. Maybe a proposed process is inefficient – they eliminate the bottlenecks. They perhaps can put together a great project plan and GANTT chart. But if you ask them to deliver the project or maintain it in a production environment, you may see failure and frustration. This is where the next groups come to the rescue.

Deliverers

Hail to the Project Managers here. These are the folks that can take a new idea that’s been boiled down into a viable plan, marshal the troops, juggle dependencies, assign resources, balance budgets, tackle key tasks personally, hit deadlines, and declare victory when the idea is a reality. Project Managers also need some deliverers to work for them. These are the folks that gobble up a chunk of work on the project plan, put their nose to the grindstone, complete the task, and then return for more. But after the victory party to celebrate successful delivery, asking them to go to the whiteboard and think of something new or asking them to keep what they delivered up and running may be unproductive.

Maintainers

These are the folks that hate to see things break down. Their greatest joy is to do things over and over to keep production up and running and on pace. They love checklists, routine tests, and a predictable work day. I once worked as an automobile insurance underwriter, which is a fancy way to say that I sat at a desk and processed one application after another all day long, day after day, entering data and rating risks. I lasted about a year. This isn’t part of my gifts or talents, and I gained a whole new level of respect for this group of people. Without them, the organization breaks down and ceases to function. And as anyone in hosting knows, keeping systems up and running is a key fundamental of the business. The coolest new features don’t matter a bit if there’s no electricity in the data center.

Dangers of “Pigeonholing”

An organization needs to know which category their folks are fulfilling in their current roles. But in reality, people often have gifts and talents that lend themselves to more than one of these groups. A smart organization will recognize this and allow people to grow and develop rather than sticking them in one spot forever. For example, I’m about equal parts Refiner and Deliverer, and don’t ask me to innovate or maintain – you’ll be sorry. I’ll do best in a role that requires both refining and delivering. When an organization pigeonholes its people, they’ll only keep the people so long. They have a way of leaving to find organizations with more fulfilling opportunities.
I can find all four of these groups here at SoftLayer. We also allow some crossover into the functions of other groups. We’ve found that a good number of our Deliverers are also good Innovators for example. Consequently, as a company, we’ve lost a grand total of three employees since our beginning.

Relationships are, well, key. This is true in all walks of life. It is especially true in a business environment. At SoftLayer, we understand this. There are two very important types of relationships that we continually try to maintain.

1. Customer Relationships - This is an obvious one. We constantly want to know what our customers have to say. We try to set aside time to call our customers, get to know them, gather feedback, and find out what makes them tick. If there is a way to improve, we want to know about it. Some customers prefer to deal with a specific person, whether it is a Salesperson, Support Technician, or Accounting Representative. While all departments work as a team and we do not specifically assign customers to certain employees, we do enjoy working with you if you specifically enjoy working with one of us! If there is not a little bit of personal communication, we would be your typical, cold corporation. We do not want to be labeled with this stigma. There is no denying that SoftLayer is rapidly growing into a major corporation. But we want to be the major corporation with a small company feel. Each of you is our favorite customer - keep dishing it, we can take it!

2. Employee to Employee Relationships - We would not be where we are if we did not get along well with one another. In fact, we work extremely hard at keeping the utmost respect for one another. Our technicians are some of the best in the industry, our Accounting Representatives some of the most personable, and our Sales team is quite the group of go-getters. So it is easy to keep a good lasting relationship with each and every employee. I can speak for myself, by saying that sometimes I am not the most technical person. It is great to have someone to go to at the drop of a hat to find out about a specific application or hardware question for a customer. The Sales Team is here for anyone to ask about pricing, or to help a customer with an upgrade. And Accounting is always there for any sort of billing need.

In a nutshell we are one big, happy family - that goes for customers and the entire SoftLayer team.

I live in America, and as any American knows, we pipe Christmas Music and Christmas TV and Christmas Movies directly into the brains of as many people as possible to attempt to keep everyone safe during this difficult shopping season.

Admit it: when you and your neighbor are running to Electronics in hope of getting the last Wii from the shelf, sometimes the only thing stopping you from dumping a bag of Skittles in front of him or knocking over a Lego display is the constant barrage of Rudolph and Frosty and other Christmas cheer over the PA.

Unfortunately, unless you are content to give everyone a copy of Dryping for Dummies (By Steve Kinman, SoftLayer Press), you will have to wade into the shopping rush to eek out your Santa sized bag ‘o goodies.

Never fear, however! The Retail Industry is there to help! For those who don’t want to dive head first into the excitement of Christmas Shopping (which can make even a foray to pick up some toilet paper from Wal*Mart into an exciting 2 hour adventure), nearly every retail outlet is willing to give you a 2″ x 3″ credit card like piece of plastic stamped with their brand. Yes, the Gift Card.

It’s been said that over 60% of American adults have either bought or received a Gift Card, this year. It’s a very convenient device. For example, if I figure out that Lance really likes Outback Steakhouse, I can buy a $10 gift card from Outback Steakhouse, wrap it in a $1 Hallmark card (although, sometimes the retail outlets already have such cards (stamped with their logo) available), and give it to Lance. “Merry Christmas!” Sometimes you can even get the card gift wrapped.A gift-wrapped credit card!

We’re to the point, now, that simply handing somebody a plastic card is actually considered a thoughtful gift. On the way to work, I heard that any fishing lover would prefer to receive a Bass Pro Shop Gift Card over, say, that Bassomatic ‘76 they’ve been talking about.

But, lets be honest… it doesn’t take much to choose a gift card. I overhear Lance say he likes steak, I see a Outback Steakhouse card, and bam! Before you can say “Impulse Purchase” I now have an instant gift! Sure, it’s not as fulfilling as, say, a box of prime steaks… but this way you can give him more gift cards! And more is better, right?

But the comedy doesn’t end there. Have you ever seen a gift card in a usable denomination? Usually I find cards with a value between $10-50. Can you even get a steak meal for $10 at Outback Steakhouse? (Don’t forget to include the State and Federal Wallet Excise Tax.) And I’m not talking about that free bread, either. No, what happens is you end up either leaving a trifling amount of money on the card (Your balance is … twenty five cents), or you end up wrapping your card in a sizable amount of cash. See how neat this is? I bought a $10 card, and Lance will pay the balance of the meal… AND STILL THANK ME FOR IT!

Retailers make MILLIONS of dollars off the trifling amounts that just sit, unused, on gift cards. And gift cards aren’t usable at another store, so if I want to buy a $20 book, but I only have a $10 Half Priced Books gift card (and a $10 Outback Card Lance gave me as a Thank You), I’ll use the card + $10. You can almost never just spend what’s on the card.

Here’s some friendly holiday advice: If you know what your friend wants, buy it for him. If you don’t, ask people close to him. Even Aunt Myrtle’s sweater contains more holiday cheer value than the sweater’s monetary value in McDonalds Gift Cards.

Is there a way out of this trap of value-locked slivers of plastic? Indeed there is! If you wish to transfer value to another person without locking them into one choice, give them… CASH! Yes, greenbacks, bucks, dead presidential portraits, green… whatever you call it, United States Federal Notes are accepted by all retailers, in any denomination. Value not used by one retailer can then be spent at another. This value can also be stored up where it may earn interest and combine with more legal tender until a large item can be bought. The best solution for any gift giving problem where “Gift Cards” are suggested as a solution is CASH, such as when you absolutely can’t think up something to buy. And it makes a great stocking stuffer. In Bulk. Hint, hint.

Yes, you in the back? What does this mean for SoftLayer? Just because this is a SoftLayer Blog doesn’t mean it has to have a SoftLayer moral! But lucky you… I’ve got one right here: (this weekend only, special holiday financing available!)

Like Gift Cards, each SoftLayer server comes with a bloc of value attached: bandwidth. This valuable commodity makes the servers work. You can have all the processing power in the world, a RAID 75 array with 100 petabytes of space, 40 terabytes of onboard memory, and if you don’t have any bandwidth… it’s all moot.

Unlike gift cards, however, SoftLayer attaches some real value you can actually use. For many users, even touching the top of the 2 Terabyte bandwidth pipe is a real exercise.

However, sometimes, like gift cards, a customer buys a server with value attached… but simply cannot use it all. Or they put the server 100% on the private network and never use the bandwidth at all (Like that $20 gift card from Sludge Emporium your Granddad gave you last year). Is there any way to salvage this value?

Indeed! The SoftLayer Secret Labs rolled out a new feature a while back: Virtual Dedicated Racks. These VDR’s (as we cool SoftLayer Secret Lab Technicians like to call them, because TLAs are cool) allow you to virtually rack a group of servers behind a virtual bandwidth meter. All the attached bandwidth value of those servers are lumped together, like a good ‘ol pile o’ cash, and the aggregate amount attached to the rack. An example:

Each server comes with 2T bandwidth (generally).

Without VDRs, if server bassomatic.76.example.com only uses 1T of bandwidth, and server auntmyrtle.sweaters.example.com uses up 3T, you end up with a full 1T overage on Aunt Myrtle’s site, even though you have a full 1T worth of value on the other server not being used!

With VDRs, the two servers pile their value together, making a 4T rack. Bassomatic.76.example.com uses 3T this month, while Aunt Myrtle’s site only uses 1T. Combined, their “rack” uses 4T of 4T, so 4-4 = 0!

Like cash, but unlike gift cards, with VDRs you are able to pool your value to allow the usage of more value at one time. Now how awesome is that?

If you would like to experience the excitement of pooling your bandwidth, talk to your SPS (as we cool SoftLayer Secret Lab Technicians like to call our SoftLayer Professional SLalespersons, because an acronym is still a cool TLA as long as only three letters are capitalized), and get yourself a Virtual Dedicated Rack (make sure to call it a “VDR” when you order it to sound cool).

And let ‘em know this post by Shawn got you interested. If I get enough referrals, I’ll get the December SoftLayer Referral Outback Steakhouse Gift Card!

As I watched the Dallas Cowboys dismantle the Green Bay Packers last Thursday night, I noticed an ever so slight – almost invisible – passing of the torch from Brett Favre to Tony Romo. It became quite clear – Football is a young man’s game.

As I sat and pondered what that must feel like for Brett and his crew, I noticed frightening similarities between hosting and football. Hosting appears to be a young man’s sport as well.

Now, before you guys (there I go again) pile on and beat me down – hear me out. I am not saying that Brett and his older brethren are washed up and incapable of playing football – but I am saying, their primetime has passed and any future success should be considered borrowed time on a great career coming to conclusion. Facts are facts – professional football is a very physical and mental job and the youth + skill appears to outweigh age + experience.

This leads me back to hosting. A world full of very young and extremely talented players. An industry where degrees and certifications come in a distant second behind skill and innovative thinking. I often find my thirty-something (barely) resume on-the-line with both new and old competitors. I can assure you, the young competitors terrify me, and the older ones typically bore me.

The recent interviews for potential new hires here at SL are eye-opening. Young Guns coming out of high school with Cisco Certs, college students working on cutting edge technologies and of course – the prodigy that shows up from time to time who was born to design and innovate beyond all our wildest dreams.

I often tell Mike, our CFO, that technology is changing the rules of business and how things will be done going forward. In Mike’s accounting world, graduates come out of college with lots of book knowledge and very little experience and gain experience over their career. In the technology world, I would argue the younger talent holds more technical knowledge (book or real world) than the older more established crowd What I bring to the table is business and technical experience; but I find myself learning more and more technology from my younger team members everyday. It’s a never ending battle to stay on the leading edge – but I wonder – how long will it be before I hand the torch?

Go Cowboys!!