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GigaOM Tags Layered Tech for 3 of Top 5 Fastest Cloud Data Centers

GigaOM, a leading technology news site, recently recognized Layered Tech for leading the big dogs of cloud computing in efficiency and speed. The GigaOM article highlighted Layered Tech’s superior cloud computing performance from our Chicago, Kansas City and Dallas data centers, based on Compuware/CloudSleuth’s Global Provider View. In fact, Layered Tech claimed three of the top five spots among more than 40 US-based cloud data centers competing for this honor of superior performance.

Our goal with the Layered Tech eBusiness Cloud Data Center is to offer our customers a platform well suited to running critical business transactions. Our customer’s application performance, availability and security are all critical factors. We have strived to excel in each of these areas and are happy to see our performance validated through services like CloudSleuth and GigaOM.

Kevin Van Mondfrans, VP of Product ManagementAbout the Author: As Vice President of Product Management at Layered Tech, Kevin Van Mondfrans (@VANMONDFRANS | +Kevin Van Mondfrans) is responsible for driving the Layered Tech portfolio of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and managed service offerings. With more than 20 years of experience product development and marketing, Kevin has been delivering innovative computing, storage, cloud and service offering with companies such as HP, Dell, and Savvis.

Tips to Guard Against Hacks and Attacks

I attended the 2013 InnoTech San Antonio Technology Innovation Conference & Expo on April 17th.  InnoTech is the region’s largest business-to-business technology event.

This conference has grown to the point of needing to move to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center.

Along with the tracks offered in Mobility, Women in Tech, Infrastructure, Big Data with Analytics and IT Leadership, I participated in the Cyber Security Symposium.  I moderated a panel of experts on Security – It’s All About Perspective.  The panel had representation from corporate leaders, consultants and higher education.  The panel members were Mark Krisak, Director of Information Security, HEB; Chip Meadows, Sr. Security Analyst, UTSA; Joe Oranday, Vice President, Enterprise Information Security, Frost; Steve Werby, President and Senior Information Security Consultant, Befriend.

We had a lively discussion with the audience of around 100 people.  Even though we discussed technology and some of the newer techniques to deal with hacks and attacks, the takeaway from the gathered experience on the panel was to focus on the basics.  When the panelists were asked what the one best thing was that an organization can do to protect itself, the answers were:

  • Keep your patches current
  • Focus on user security awareness training
  • Deliver metrics on your program to track progress and get support
  • Work with your users

These solutions are not new and do not require deep technical knowledge.  I think we can all learn a lot from these experts.

I will be presenting a session on Hacktivism at the 2013 ETA Annual Meeting & Expo on April 30th through May 2nd in New Orleans, LA.  I hope to see you there.

Jeff Reich, Layered Tech Chief Risk OfficerAbout the Author: As Chief Risk Officer at Layered Tech, Jeff Reich (@LayeredTechCRO+Jeff Reich) drives the company’s security and compliance services and guides risk mitigation efforts for clients. With more than 30 years of experience, Reich is a well-known risk management and security expert in the industry. He holds CRISC, CISSP and CHS-III certifications and is an ISSA Distinguished Fellow.

Meeting the Demands of the Public Sector in Step with Microsoft Dynamics

At the 2013 Microsoft Dynamics Annual Conference in New Orleans this March, Layered Tech was awarded the prestigious “2013 Microsoft Dynamics Partner of the Year”.  I was thrilled to be presented the award on behalf of the Layered Tech team by Microsoft General Manager for Public Sector, Amir Caprilles and Microsoft Federal Practice Director, Jody McCann.

During the presentation, Microsoft acknowledged our longstanding relationship and Layered Tech’s commitment to building secure, private, FISMA-Compliant cloud infrastructure for Microsoft federal partners. Layered Tech was selected by Microsoft from more than 90 federal partners based on redefining the opportunity for Microsoft to sell into the federal market by giving all Microsoft federal partners a FISMA-Compliant infrastructure to custom build their solutions for their federal agency customers.

Here’s some background on the partnership:

In 2012 Microsoft Corporation contracted with Layered Tech to provide “Microsoft Dynamics for Government – Hosted by Layered Tech,” a FISMA compliant cloud offering for their Dynamics solutions.

Hosted by Layered Tech in top-tier data centers, Microsoft Dynamics Government Cloud business solutions provide any federal agency the opportunity to:

  • Modernize mission critical workloads in either a FISMA-compliant, single-tenant private cloud with dedicated physical resources, or a FISMA-compliant, federal-only community cloud.
  • Sharply reduce the Certification & Accreditation time for new services by leveraging platform certification documentation developed by Layered Tech.
  • Partner with Layered Tech’s security professionals during the NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology) audit process through to Authorization to Operate (ATO).

We have been working in partnership with Microsoft since the fourth quarter of 2012 to further educate the 90 federal partners and 200 Microsoft federal employees to advocate our joint offering at product launch events, conferences, and are now engaging their sales teams on a road show. This partnership will allow Layered Tech to keep in step with the government’s intensifying need for the benefits of business solutions delivered through secure cloud computing, while providing Microsoft greater opportunity to leverage the versatile FISMA-compliant application platform. It’s a win-win situation.

Teri EricksonAbout the Author:  Teri Erickson is the Senior Director of Cloud Services, Public Sector at LT Government Solutions.  Teri’s 13 years of experience in IT include the last four years at NEW WORLD APPS (a Layered Tech Company) and prior experience as a founding member and sales director at Current Analysis.

 

To the West Coast and Beyond!

Layered Tech’s facility investments expand our global presence and increase connectivity

Recently, we expanded our data center portfolio while significantly increasing our footprint and Internap connectivity at our core facilities.  These investments further strengthen our ability to provide flexible solutions and highly reliable managed hosting services that meet even the most complex enterprise customer requirements.

We added a new data center in Santa Clara, Calif., to meet the rapidly growing demand from Silicon Valley customers.  This new location expands our presence and also adds another level of geographic redundancy for customers interested in a West Coast location.  Since establishing the facility this year, we’ve already added another 10 Gb of Internap connectivity, bringing total Santa Clara bandwidth to 20 Gb, as well as transport supplied by other providers.

In addition to our new West Coast facility and its upgrades, we’ve strategically expanded our core data centers to rack even more servers and address customers’ growing needs.  We doubled the footprint in the Databank Dallas facility and nearly tripled the footprint in the Coresite Chicago facility.  Our expanded Coresite footprint not only meets the local demand, but also addresses the growing number of national and international companies that want a Chicago presence and are attracted by the data center’s downtown location.

We also added an additional 10 Gb of Internap bandwidth to each of our core data centers, located in Dallas, Chicago and Cedar Falls, Iowa.  While we use a diverse mix of providers for industry-leading quality connectivity, Internap now provides 70 Gb of connectivity to Layered Tech data centers.  Our Internap relationship helps ensure that customers will get the same high level of service, connectivity and flexibility in each of our data centers, even if they choose to move from one Layered Tech facility to another.

Find out more!

Layered Tech Named to Inc. 5000

We are pleased to announce that Layered Tech ranked No. 622 on the 2009 Inc. 5000, an exclusive ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies by Inc. magazine.

Inc. magazine ranked companies according to percentage of revenue growth from 2005 through 2008.  To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of 2005, be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent as of Dec. 31, 2008.  Revenue in 2005 must have been at least $200,000, and revenue in 2008 must have been at least $2 million.

We earned a spot in the top 12 percent because of our three-year growth rate of 441 percent.  We also are excited to rank No. 22 on the DFW list and No. 81 on the IT services industry list.  We’ve evolved from an emerging dedicated hosting company to a recognized Web hosting provider whose scalable infrastructure powers millions of sites and a wide array of Internet-enabled applications.  While we measure our success by serving our customers’ evolving needs, this recognition is a testament to our strong market position.  Our Inc. 5000 company profile is available here.

Inc. shared some other interesting facts:

  • Texas had the second highest number of Inc. 5000 companies with 393; California led the list with 612 companies.
  • IT Service companies dominated this year’s list with 658 making the cut.
  • Despite the ongoing recession, aggregate revenue among the companies on the list actually increased to $214 billion, up $29 billion from last year, with a median three-year growth rate of 126 percent.
  • The Inc. 5000 are responsible for creating more than 1 million jobs since their founding, making the list one of the best examples of the impact private, fast-growing companies can have on the economy.

Complete results of the Inc. 5000 can be found at www.inc.com/inc5000/2009/index.html.