During an early 2004 customer gathering, former EV1 CEO Robert Marsh asked attendees whether they'd be interested in putting multiple servers on the same private network. I still remember how their eyes lit up. 100Mbps server-to-server connectivity? Oooh yeah!
I had a similar reaction to this announcement on SoftLayer's new "customer exchange". SoftLayer says every single one of its dedicated servers is now deployed with a secure gigabit connection into its private Meet Me Room. Imagine scenarios like Zoho's integration with OmniDrive, or tools from Flickr, del.icio.us, etc that automatically output users' content on their TypePad blogs. SoftLayer customers can now jointly develop these sorts of cross-site interactivity without incurring bandwidth charges for data transfer between their systems. How cool is that?? (Better yet, SoftLayer actually saves money by keeping traffic between customers within its private network instead of paying for packets to travel in and out of its data center.)
Earlier this week, AlertLogic CTO Misha Govshteyn and I had a discussion on customer service via his blog. I think we came to the agreement that while investments on delivering an exceptional customer experience can pay off big time, your ROI is contingent upon having an outstanding product (which itself is a key part of the customer experience). SoftLayer is a great example of how hosting providers can combine both.
By the way, SoftLayer's mobile portal is another customer-friendly new feature. In addition, the company recently launched a new data center with 500 watts psf of power capacity. It also upgraded its Verio and Internap uplinks to 10GigE.
I hope SoftLayer's upcoming projects include an application directory where customers can find partners for creating mashups with. (I think this could become a powerful sales tool as well.)
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