Did you hear about ThePlanet. . .

I never have used Softlayer, although I've heard good things. I had a bad experience with ThePlanet however.
 
This is still all speculation. In short, the company that owns The Planet just acquired Softlayer about a week ago.
 
It's not at all odd to hear about mergers or acquisitions these days, especially in this economy. The web hosting industry can't remain immune to them either. The Planet is and has no doubt been a major player and it doesn't surprise me at all that they're expanding their business and acquiring other companies.
 
While an investment firm owns both, I'd hope they continue to run individual companies and continue to multi-brand the individual organizations. People will swap from one company to another to deal with different people and different ways of operating business. I'd hope they don't fully merge both companies and force people to use one avenue of support etc.
 
Hmmm, This would create a very strong hosting company which would fight to be one of the real leaders in the market.
 
I wonder what other companies are going to follow the lead. If they dont group together then they could be forced to reorganize there business independantly to keep up with the future changes with competition.

PS: It is a big deal, for those who use there services now :) the changes to come will be interesting to see.
 
Both of these providers are already widely popular, but I don't see a merger making the competition weaker.
 
That would mean that one of those companys are struggling in some way and may want to sell up fast.. But as for weaking the competition... Just have to wait and see.
 
There was a letter sent out about this.

Greetings again, from all of us at SoftLayer.

Once more, I have some exciting news to share with you.

It's been a busy time for us with the creation of our new capital structure, through which our management team and GI Partners has acquired all equity in the company.

For those who are not aware, GI also owns a large stake in The Planet, and I now have the pleasure of telling you that we are in discussions to merge The Planet with SoftLayer. The goal is for the transaction to be complete in the fourth quarter of this year.

I know you have a lot of questions. To be perfectly honest, we are at the beginning of this and don't have all the answers. Teams at both companies have just begun discussing how to integrate our organizations, and their work will yield the details we don't yet know.

For customers, nothing is changing in the near term. Both companies still operate independently, and your products, services, support, and contacts are the same today as they were yesterday. For now, each company continues to be led by its current management team. Pending completion of the merger, I will have the privilege of becoming CEO of the merged company.

As I hope you have seen in recent days, we will provide as much information as possible as our discussions with The Planet progress. But for now, I want to share some of the most important information: the reason why.

SoftLayer and The Planet have a lot in common: solid customer bases, broad product and service lines, a high level of commitment to the cloud, and more. We also have different strengths - The Planet provides different services, such as collocation, on a large scale, and SoftLayer leverages automation expertise to deliver innovative solutions. Together, we can provide customers greater value through a wider continuum of services and the most scalable, automated, and cost-effective global infrastructure.

On a very personal note, there is nothing in my life I'm more proud of than SoftLayer. We might be all about automation, but my friends and I have built this company, quite literally, by hand. It's our life, not just our livelihoods. And we've been in this industry quite a while and have seen a lot of changes. We wouldn't pursue this opportunity if we had anything but confidence in its success and a clear vision for bringing its advantages to customers and stakeholders. If you have any questions or concerns, I invite you to talk to your individual SoftLayer contact or directly to George Karidis, our Chief Strategy Officer, at gkaridis@softlayer.com.

Three bars for life,
Lance Crosby
Click to expand...

So, it's still in the talk phase, highly likely that it will happen. But still not many answers can be given with 100% certainty.

What is for sure though is Softlayer will continue to use the same hardware solutions they have in place. The Planet uses Dell servers, and Softlayer will look at how to optimize their purchasing over time.

Probably means a shift to SuperMicro for all data centres - too early to say though. This particular bit is not 100% certain. If the merge happens.

Another thing is, both The Planet and Softlayer will continue to operate in all of the data centres that the two companies have.
But the headquarters will shift to Dallas (TP is based in Houston).
Again this is if the merge happens.

They'll also maintain their operation teams at all locations as well. Which is probably good news for the employees.

I highly doubt that The Planet (TP) or Softlayer (SL) are struggling, they're both big companies with many customers.

Also, the dedicated hosting market has plenty of competition, a good thing to remember is many of these providers are resellers of companies such as Softlayer, The Planet, SingleHop, Layered Tech and so on.

So, the market will still have healthy competition, which is always good to hear.

Anyway, as with all things, time will tell...
 
Should the merger be completed (highly likely), the SL management team will be the ones in charge.

Though I've not confirmed it, I heard that ThePlanet CEO will be stepping aside.

ThePlanet has some legacy infrastructure issues which will pose the greatest challenge. From the roll-up of Rackshack to EV1Servers to their merger with ThePlanet, there are 3 different datacenter models at work.

SoftLayer has an excellent datacenter management framework and very high density. I would expect ThePlanet's current and EV1-side operations to become increasingly like SoftLayers as clients with older systems migrate to newer options.

Overall, I think this is a huge positive in the industry. This will continue to push bandwidth pricing lower, which is a major costs of server operations.
 
I'm surprised that Doug would be stepping down. He's brought A LOT to The Planet and how they operate. Even their operations center in Houston was pretty much his doing (converting the old commerce building). Where did you read information on him stepping aside after the merger? Maybe I'll have to drop him a call here one of these days and see what he's up to.
 
I think the hosting market is going to change dramatically from this. Two major providers becoming an even more massive provider. I'm curious to see how this will end.
 
Well I dont say that TP and SL will merge. The thing is they will belong to the same company group. ie Peugeot and Citroen are under same company. Thus owning more than one brand in same business should be good. I hope it should be good for all of us too.
 
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