Type Subsidiary Website softlayer.com Founded 2005 Parent organization IBM | Industry Hosting Founder Lance Crosby CEO Lance Crosby | |
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Key people Lance Crosby (Chairman & CEO) Products Dedicated Hosting, Managed Services Headquarters Dallas, Texas, United States Profiles | ||
SoftLayer Technologies, Inc. is a dedicated server, managed hosting and cloud computing provider. Founded in 2005, it was acquired by IBM in 2013.
History
GI Partners acquired a majority equity stake in SoftLayer in August 2010. In November 2010, SoftLayer merged with The Planet Internet Services and consolidated the customer base under the SoftLayer brand. In Q1 2011, the company reported hosting more than 81,000 servers for more than 26,000 customers in locations throughout the United States.
In July 2011, the company announced plans for international expansion to Amsterdam and Singapore to add to the existing network of US-based data centers in Dallas, Texas;San Jose, California; Seattle, Washington; Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico; Houston, Texas and Washington, D.C. Most of these data centers were leased via Digital Realty Trust. As of May 2015, the company has 23 data centers in 11 different countries.
On June 4, 2013, IBM announced its acquisition of SoftLayer under not disclosed financial terms, but according to Reuters in a deal that could fetch more than $2 billion. to form an IBM Cloud Services Division. At the time of acquisition, Softlayer was described as the biggest privately held cloud infrastructure provider (IaaS) in the world.