With its multiple 10G connections provisioned with Qwest and Internap, Seattle customers can now connect to one of seven IP backbone carriers that are part of the SoftLayer network. The company says it decided to select Qwest because of its status as the bandwidth leader in the Northwest.

"This was a mandatory step for us to take prior to building out our next Server Pod in Seattle," says George Karidis, chief strategy and marketing officer of SoftLayer. "We know the level of redundancy and quality that our customers expect and we will not deliver anything less."

SoftLayer has also begun phase two of construction in Seattle to go online in April, expanding the facility to an additional 3,000 servers. Phase one was completely filled in less than three months from initial launch. When fully built out, the SoftLayer’s Seattle data center pods will have capacity for more than 10,000 servers.

Karidis says its Seattle location has seen considerable demand, having already filled its initial 2,000 server capacity. The facility's close proximity to high capacity links to Asia has driven much of this demand, and Karidis anticipates the demand for access to the SoftLayer infrastructure to only increase with this summer's Beijing Olympic Games.

The SoftLayer data center in Seattle is relatively close to the new Verizon-led organization, bringing an oceanic fiber landing that will provide up to 5.12Tbps in bandwidth connectivity with Asia. This will be the shortest bandwidth route across the Pacific.

Headquartered in Plano, Texas, SoftLayer provides Web hosting and on-demand data center services on a global basis from facilities located in Dallas, Texas and Seattle.

The company just recently opened its second facility in Dallas last month, investing more than $5 million in the renovations.