Let me take you back a few years. Remember the SCO lawsuit? Their attempts to sell licenses? Well, only one company bought one -- EV1. Who are now part of SoftLayer (via ThePlanet). Clearly IBM is just after said license. :-)
IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
61–70 of 113 posts
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've used SL in the past and have had business associates use them as well. I experienced nothing but problems, and regularly hear complaints from those who still use it. This may just be a case of IBM needing to acquire companies to add revenue to their financial statements.
That's strange. They're the #1 dedicated hosting provider used by YC-funded startups. They have a reputation as the best facilities, best private network, best control panel and best support staff you can get with rented hardware. They've swapped failed hardware for me in under an hour at 3AM their time, recovered data from a corrupt disk for me at no charge, their reliability and network is generally excellent... wh…
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Dallas startup scene is exploding right now, especially for B2B companies. Geographic convenience to both coasts, low taxes, low living costs, high concentration of Fortune 500s and a lot of good talent itching to leave their cubicles. http://launchdfw.com/
How about the weather? I hear it is really hot in summer. Is it comparable to Pheonix?
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#64Worth observing that for all the excitement about the recent crop of billion-dollar Silicon Valley startups, SoftLayer is based in Dallas, TX (and founded only in 2005). I suspect, and this will be easy enough to prove one way or the other after a few years so feel free to call me on it, that we'll see a disproportionate number of successful exits come from /outside/ the valley. My gut tells me that high-cost of livi…
There is one major problem to starting what are to become big tech companies outside of the Bay Area: labor supply. Very few places in the world can feed the labor needs of a fast growing tech company. Even the largest companies in the Bay Area have to go to New York, LA, and elsewhere to hire more people. What that means is that you are welcome to start a company wherever you like, but when it comes time to hire a l…
I know of a few small, profitable companies that acquire talent by luring them away from major metro areas. Also, lots of big companies are attracting talent from people who are not in an urban cluster like SF, NYC, etc. IBM is a great example of that.
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normally I would agree. But with regards to Dallas, we are a large corporation (and usually energy-focused) first town. The Dallas Morning News, our largest rag here locally, isn't even covering this acquisition: http://www.dallasnews.com/business/ Hard to unseat or even compete with SV if you can't even get local attention or coverage for a big tech/startup win.
DFW has much more than energy. Corporate HQs, semiconductor, banking, technology, etc... (Although the traffic is starting to suck worse than ever with all the folks from the coasts being lost and construction going on...) There's a large number corporate data jobs in the area needing to be filled. (Analyst, programmer, DBA, warehouse, BIG DATA superstars, whatever...) The Dallas Morning Snooze is not exactly a great…
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#66IBM is buying SoftLayer to try to go head up with AWS. It's not going to work. Personally I won't buy an IBM product because I know it's just like Oracle: software entrapment. Nothing wrong with that business model it's just not one I want to be involved with. In other news, great job by SoftLayer to exit as pricing pressure from AWS and GoogleAppEngine was going to steadily erode their margins over time. I feel the…
I would be surprised if Rackspace sold out to Oracle, considering how Rackspace has a stated goal to fight patent trolls.
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#67Worth observing that for all the excitement about the recent crop of billion-dollar Silicon Valley startups, SoftLayer is based in Dallas, TX (and founded only in 2005). I suspect, and this will be easy enough to prove one way or the other after a few years so feel free to call me on it, that we'll see a disproportionate number of successful exits come from /outside/ the valley. My gut tells me that high-cost of livi…
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Dallas startup scene is exploding right now, especially for B2B companies. Geographic convenience to both coasts, low taxes, low living costs, high concentration of Fortune 500s and a lot of good talent itching to leave their cubicles. http://launchdfw.com/
How about the weather? I hear it is really hot in summer. Is it comparable to Pheonix?
[1]: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/fwd/?n=d100info [2]: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/xmacis.php?wfo=psr
All that said, yes it is typically quite dry in Phoenix. No, that does not make the heat somehow less significant. The sun scars the land and kills most life. It's a rough place to be.
Also, the tech scene there is quite meh. There's a few big data centers and some little companies hosting things in them, and there's GoDaddy, but there isn't much else. Don't even think about Phoenix over Dallas unless you really like hiking (that scene is amazing in PHX).
Re: IBM to Acquire SoftLayer
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about the weather? I hear it is really hot in summer. Is it comparable to Pheonix?
I believe it was last year that we had 100 days straight of 100+ degree weather. It's a beating... Pretty much Juneish - October are unbearable. The rest of the year is lovely.
For what it's worth, I wasn't seeking out info to disprove you, rather I was trying to make the argument that no humans should exist in Phoenix so I was collecting data on that. I thought you might like to have the measured figures.