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| photography by Jeremy Sharp |
Technology is both a sprint and a marathon: a sprint to be among the first movers in an industry and a marathon to stay ahead of the race. Todd Abrams saw many Internet companies lagging behind and started a web-hosting company called Layered Technologies to help.
Abrams saw dot-coms spending too much time and money on the constant upkeep and expansion of their computer hardware infrastructure, the nuts and bolts of Internet companies. Layered Technologies helps to ease that pressure by enhancing a company’s back-end Internet infrastructure through either a traditional server or an interconnected network of servers called The Grid Layer. With their new form of grid computing, the Frisco-based company can allocate power and resources to clients, much like a utility company dispenses power to homes. The best part for dot-coms is their ability to scale their computing ability up (or down) without expense or hassle.
Just over three years old, Layered Technologies now stands as the 23rd-largest, active web-hosting site in the world. (For the sake of comparison, Yahoo is no. 7.) The company has been a relatively quiet contender, relying on word-of-mouth marketing for its growth. Thanks to a loyal, enthusiastic clientele of “geeks,” the word of mouth is working. Abrams and Layered Technologies can boast a growth rate of 15 to 20 percent a month, and plans for a European and West Coast expansion are in the works.
“I think a lot of people would be surprised at the clients we have,” Abrams says. “The geek built our business to where it stands today.”
With no geek shortage in sight, Layered Technologies shows no signs of slowing down.
