Slashdot Mirror
IBM Buys Dallas Based Softlayer For $2 Billion
An anonymous reader writes "IBM this morning announced a deal to acquire the Dallas based hosting company Softlayer, the largest privately held cloud computing provider in the world. Formerly known as The Planet, they have a dark past and hopefully a bright future. Interesting that ISS and Softlayer will now be under the same roof. 'IBM will integrate SoftLayer’s public-cloud services with its own IBM SmartCloud portfolio. In theory, that will allow IBM to more speedily deliver a combination of private, public and hybridized cloud platforms to business clients. CloudLayer features include the ability to deploy virtual cloud servers (with processors 2.0GHz or faster), a content-delivery network with scalability and security, an object-storage platform based on OpenStack Object Storage, and private-cloud solutions.'"
The cloud bubble can't get much bigger than this. Can it?
for a couple of buzzwords...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Interesting that ISS and Softlayer will now be under the same roof.
Hey, Soulskill if you're going to insert random links into someone's submission you might want to get the info right. Your spam link to SlashBI says "IaaS" not ISS. Are you really so incompetent that you can't even cut-and-paste without fucking up?
about ibm hiring former hp executives?
I forget the connection SoftLayer had to The Planet, but it was not formerly ThePlanet - my company left The Planet to move over to SoftLayer. It has been excellent value for the money and hopefully IBM will not change that.
Is IBM's present 'cloud' stuff broken in some way that would make something that Softlayer does particularly attractive/valuable as an IP or product buy, or is this more of a straight purchase of Softlayer's already-deployed facilities and existing customers to more swiftly expand their marketshare?
AWS (Amazon web services) is the largest cloud solutions provider. So don't be fooled, privately owned is the keyword here, like anybody gives a shit in regards to solutions.
OK, there's little doubt that there's a serious cloud bubble going on, and in that context it may seem that IBM just threw away lots of money. But, they have tons of money to begin with. On top of that, SoftLayer is a provider of datacenter space at its core, and I'm sure IBM has customers who need hosted systems.
When you peel off the marketing junk, "cloud" is actually a good thing for a datacenter provider. They get to buy less hardware to support more customers and get it running for them faster, if they know what they're doing. For traditional businesses to adopt it, a middle ground between public cloud and on-site physical servers like this might be the stepping stone they need to move some of the stuff *that makes sense* to a hosting provider.
IBM is a very staid company by nature, so you know they've gone over this deal backwards and forwards and see potential in it. The only downside I see is the one that comes with most US/European acquisitions by IBM. They have a tendency to come in, acquire all the intellectual property, then find every single possible position that can be offshored, resulting in a lot of job loss.
When an entity, that has proven that they have the means (some schmuck off the street can't do this), wants to buy a company, they do due diligence. They send in the accountants, lawyers and other business types to go in and look over the books.
They already had tech folks who looked at it before they started the process.
Then the finance guys come up with a figure for the value of the company - like Discounted Cash Flow - and that's why you'll see companies bleeding red ink still get bought out for unrealistic amounts.
Then the PHBs have a look. Does the company fit in with the strategic plans? Like, what would it take to create their own company and build market share compared to just buying a company (this company) who already has it. This is where you get the truly obscene amounts paid for companies - even if they are losing money.
I guess my MBA has come into use after all -explaining PHBs mentality to techies.
What dark past? The linked article doesn't elaborate, nor does Wikipedia. I've been a customer of ThePlanet / Softlayer for years; it always seemed like a good company to me!
International Space Station?
So... IBM in space?
to arrange a visit from our team of consultants to allow you to configure your new server.
Yahoo buys Tumblr,
IBM buys Softlayer,
Microsoft buys InCycle,
CBS buys TVGuide...
With all these liquid assets flowing around, it won't be long before everyone is back to work!
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Softlayer was founded by Lance Crosby, the COO for The Planet.. They forced him out of the company, so he left and started Softlayer. Shortly after The Planet merged with EV1, and then about 5 years later Softlayer and The Planet merged and kept the Softlayer name.
I had servers at The Planet the entire time.. it's a good company.. and they have the revenue and profits to actually be worth $2B.. unlike some other recent acquisitions.
I wonder what's going to happen with all of those poor bastards that got the Three Bars for Life tattoos? Will IBM be offering free tattoo removal or cover-up or perhaps Big Blue for Life tattoos in the future?
Also, this makes me wonder what's going to happen to the relatively tech-centric culture at Three Bars. IBM isn't well known for putting up with anything other than button-ups, slacks, and such, even from their non-customer facing IT people.
Rackshack was the walmart of web hosting. I think they were the first to start using $300 POS towers for servers.
IBM used to sell servers to companies which maintained their own in-house data processing facility.
Now IBM will rent time on servers to companies which want to outsource their servers to a third party which can benefit from the economy of scale. It's just not cost effective to own commodity servers any longer. There's no business case to spend money on servers and maintaining them. The economy of scale means the datacenters in Texas are cheaper.
I wouldn't want to be a system administrator right now, unless I wanted to move to Texas and look for a job. Along with all the other unemployed system administrators.
IBM will fire them all and replace them with third-world labor. SLAs will go down the tubes and data will be lost.
This is, of course, my opinion.
I had assumed this was reference to the money that EV1 had paid to SCO for SCO "Linux" licenses, cash that went into the SCO - Linux litigation pot.
$2 billion? And they couldn't come up with a measley $4 billion to pay off SCO?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
So what's going to happen to the employees now that IBM is taking over?
From what I've read, I hope all of the folks in Houston have fresh resumes.
Why would I put my trust in a company that is outsourcing ALL of their tech staff overseas?
Piss off IBM, as long as you're not investing in local tech, you're irrelevent.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
"It was as if a million voices all cried out at once, and then went silent."
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
The /. post blurb mentions that Softlayer "[has] a dark past" but I don't see here, nor do I recall, what this dark past might actually be. Did the blurb poster mean hacking/spidering, or are they referring to some sort of clandestine intelligence role?
Can someone enlighten us on what this "dark past" is?
Kriston
Fuck em... softlayer does nothing about spammers. I've blacklisted a lot of their systems.