Layered Technologies Buys FastServers.net

Layered Technologies, a provider of IT infrastructure as an Internet service, acquired on Monday managed-hosting company FastServers.net. Financial details were not disclosed.

Layered said it plans to integrate the two companies' operations, product development, distribution, and customer-support organizations. The combined company will serve more than 6,000 customers, according to Layered.

"Thousands of clients rely on the exceptional service offerings of FastServers.net, and the combination of the two companies will expand the range of offerings and provide additional scale for client growth," Jack Finlayson, chief executive of Layered, said in a statement.

Layered provides hosting and utility computing services for customers' Web sites and Internet-enabled applications, such as e-commerce and content distribution. FastServers.Net provides server monitoring and recovery, patches and upgrades, technical support, and security.

Layered last summer launched a virtual private data center that can be controlled with only a Web browser. Described as a "super grid," the virtual data center comprises 443 CPUs and offers 920 GB of memory and 47 Tbytes of storage. The service is based on platforms from Intel and 3tera's AppLogic software.

Layered is targeting the trend toward consolidation and virtualization in the data center, as corporations look to reduce high real estate and leasing costs. The vendor's "super grid" can provide services that, in effect, scales from 10 servers to more than 100 servers without causing performance issues, according to Layered. Customers control their own private grid in Layered's data center and can set up a virtual infrastructure that includes firewalls, load balancers, Web servers, database servers, and Network Attached Storage devices. Consequently, customers can assemble, deploy, monitor, and manage all their data center infrastructure and applications using a browser.