Dedicated Hosting Solution Firm, SoftLayer, Expands Executive Management

Dallas, Texas - (The Hosting News) - January 17, 2008 - On-demand, dedicated web hosting solutions firm, SoftLayer, has hired three new employees to key manager roles: George Karidis as Chief Strategy Officer, DJ Harris as Director of Business Systems, and Chris Menard as Director of Operations.

Lance Crosby, Chief Executive Officer at SoftLayer noted, ''SoftLayer is defining the cutting edge of hosting. My standing goal is to have the best minds that will help us continue to drive emerging technologies. Team chemistry, knowledge, experience, and work ethic are the cornerstones to our success. George, DJ, and Chris build on that foundation.''

Mr. Karidis joins SoftLayer from Devonshire Investors, the private equity arm of Fidelity Investments, where he selected and implemented emerging technologies across numerous portfolio companies. At SoftLayer he will forge new ground on the company's virtual datacenter initiative, further define its product offering, and lead its sales and marketing efforts.

Mr. Karidis remarked, ''Hosting is going to evolve more in the next two years than it did in the first ten. Customers are placing more and more value on what hosting can help them accomplish beyond improved efficiency in space and power.''

Mr. Harris comes to SoftLayer from Tyco where he served as an IT Analyst and Software Engineer and was responsible for integrating multiple legacy systems into a single functional unit. He will be responsible for all of SoftLayer's internal business systems, and tasked to improve and automate all systems that have direct customer interaction.

Mr. Harris noted, ''Our customer support systems have to be as efficient and scalable as our on-demand services. They must add to the customer experience - not be a source of frustration.''

Mr. Menard joins SoftLayer from Yum, Inc., and brings extensive experience in large-scale, multi-site datacenter operations. His primary responsibilities will be over geographical expansion, datacenter management, and customer service.

Mr. Menard commented, ''After scaling operations for a single large enterprise, Iâ€™m excited to help scale operations for thousands of customers concurrently. My goal is to make certain our customersâ€™ IT meets their business needs.''

Located in the INFOMART in Dallas, Texas, SoftLayer was formed in June 2005 by a team of industry executives seeking to deliver low cost next generation on-demand hosting services for the small to medium enterprise (SME). Utilizing proprietary software, coupled with the industry's first network-within-a-network topology, the company delivers the power and control to securely manage IT environments while providing comprehensive scalability.

To learn more, please visit: www.softlayer.com.

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