This morning I woke up to several emails from people who read Philbert’s, from Tier 1 Research, report that I was leaving LT. I must say, that was some sharp reporting! I have no idea how he found out about that so quickly. We didn’t really even announce it publicly yet. But he was very kind to me in his writeup (below) and I’m thankful for anything I was able to contribute while at Layered Tech.

Layered Tech chief marketing officer John Pozadzides departs

by Philbert Shih

Chief marketing officer John Pozadzides is leaving Layered Technologies to take the CEO position at iFusion Labs, owners of Woopra, a startup Web analytics and tracking platform. Woopra also happens to be a customer of Layered Tech’s private grid offering, buying a 100-server grid deployment for its ability to handle traffic fluctuations as it moved into a public launch (early in 2008).

Pozadzides came to Layered Tech in Q3 2007 as part of the new management team put in place by CEO Jack Finlayson that included some familiar faces from the older Savvis days. While he was not in the job for long, Pozadzides played a role in raising the company’s profile. Layered Tech had long been somewhat of a secret and that has quickly changed. Pozadzides can also be credited for helping position the company as a leader in virtualized and cloud-type infrastructure – an area that the company has made great strides in over the last few years. Through product development and the acquisition of FastServers, Layered Tech has quickly moved beyond dedicated hosting and built an identity as a total infrastructure solutions provider for the developer, reseller, SMB and mid-market enterprise space. Pozadzides deserves some of the credit for making that happen.

Pozadzides departs at a busy time, as another major initiative – implementation of the Astro automation platform – is well underway. The technology and platform have been built and the next step is to integrate the on-demand benefits into the overall marketing message. This will be high on the next marketing executive’s list of priorities. T1R sees Astro as a critical piece to Layered Tech’s potential success. If the messaging is right, Layered Tech will have a nice differentiator – a truly on-demand infrastructure provider with multiple hosting flavors – that will resonate in the marketplace.

Layered Tech founder, COO and president Todd Abrams will assume most of Pozadzides’ sales and marketing roles on an interim basis as the company searches for a successor.

Philbert got most of the facts correct, but I’ll just expand on of a few of the points a bit:
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Uugh. So bad. So bad….

Well, here are the latest episodes of our award winning Layered Tech TV. If by award winning you mean we might win an award for my really bad acting. In these episodes we see part 1 and 2 from the Parallel’s conference in Las Vegas where I got the opportunity to sit down and interview a few folks on stuff that is pertinent to the hosting industry.

So, sit back and grab some popcorn. You’re going to need some real entertainment while you watch this!
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For those of you who are keeping up with every little piece of bad film I appear in, here is the second episode of Layered Tech TV. In this episode, we talk about security and the actions you can take to ensure that your server is not compromised.

My guest on the show is Layered Tech’s resident security expert Terry Perkins. With a special appearance by some bears. Enjoy!
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Oh, my. Cali Lewis, everyone’s favorite video podcaster, stopped by Layered Tech to learn about our top secret project (code named Astro) a couple of weeks ago – even though we made her keep it under wraps until yesterday!

Anyway, Cali interviewed LT’s Director of Software Development, Josh Bosquez, in part one and learned all about whats been under development for like a year. In part two I give a mini-tour of the data center and you get to learn a few things about it. The data center tour was more extensive, but some of the video had to be taken out for security reasons. Still, it’s pretty cool!
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Here is a special treat for you guys. Last week I got the opportunity to take Cali and Neal from GeekBrief.TV to visit the old Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Dallas, they brought their cameras so everyone could tag along. Why were we there, you may ask? Well, the Layered Tech datacenter in Dallas is located in the very building that was the old Federal Reserve Bank, which is now designated as a City of Dallas historic landmark.

The seven-story building was originally completed in 1921 to house the United States Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The Beaux Arts-style limestone building established Dallas as a center for economic development in the Southwest prior to World War I. The Bank significantly expanded and modernized the property in 1959. Its distinctive architectural style and detailing led the city of Dallas to designate the building a historic landmark in 1979.
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It pains me to share this, mainly because I don’t think anyone really wants to see themselves on video. But we launched a new video blog over at Layered Tech (where we do dedicated server hosting), and this is the very first episode. So if nothing else, I’ll share it for posterity.

The initial video primarily focuses on cloud computing, and gives a few industry updates as well as addresses some of LT’s cloud computing news. If anyone enjoys these shows we’ll keep em’ going. Otherwise, we’ll kill them off. You decide!
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I’ve had a lot of friends lately asking me for hosting advice since I happen to work at Layered Tech. Since everyone’s situation is different, I’ve kind of standardized on an approach to explaining the hosting situation…

Since the dawn of the World Wide Web, Webmasters have sought out the fastest hosting options with the greatest bang for the buck. We often start with shared sites that can accommodate many infrequently visited domains (like a $5 per month hosting account), but after achieving popularity on at least one, a Webmaster’s attention usually turns to a dedicated server to avoid the pain of service interruptions.
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David Hamilton of Web Host Industry Review (theWHIR.com) and I had a nice little e-mail conversation about the lecture I’ll be giving next week at HostingCon in Chicago. It’s live now if any of you guys would like to take a look.

July 23, 2008 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Utility hosting services provider Layered Tech (layeredtech.com) chief marketing officer John Pozadzides says the “new world order” is coming and when it does, “every business is either a ‘Web’ business or a dead business.”

Pozadzides will deliver the presentation “Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining” at HostingCon 2008, where he will be among the biggest names and brightest minds in web hosting who will converge in Chicago for three days of networking and workshops.

You can find the full interview here.

Join the Woopra team in Las Vegas June 26-27, 2008, for the 2008 Layered Technologies PACT Conference at the famous Caesars Palace Resort.

Jad Younan and Elie Khoury, the co-founders and lead developers of Woopra, are flying in from Lebanon for this special event, and this is your chance to meet them and discuss how Woopra works and where it is going.

The two-day event is free, but registration is required.

Read all the rest here…

At the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, I took some time out to speak with Michael Scherotter about the Layered Technologies grid computing technology.

Grid computing is a system whereby many computers are assembled together to create one large computing system with vast amounts of processor power, RAM, and storage.

For those of you who might recall, this is the exact platform we’ve chosen to deploy Woopra on, and if you watch the video now you’ll know why!
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Breaking news folks. This story has been reported by Forbes, MorningStar, Yahoo Finance, BusinessWire, Security Sales & Integration, and God knows who else. The amazing thing is… the news was only released less than two hours ago.

By the way, Elie, Jad and I are extremely grateful to Layered Technologies and 3Tera for their very quick reaction to our need to scale Woopra, and appreciative of the pledge of this absolutely massive quantity of Grid computing power. Thank you very much team!

April 02, 2008 04:31 PM Eastern Daylight Time

Layered Technologies and 3Tera to Provide 100 Grid-Servers to Woopra

Rapid Growth of Real-Time Web Analytics Service Powered by Cloud Computing Platform

PLANO, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Layered Technologies, Inc., a leading worldwide provider of “on demand” IT infrastructure, and 3Tera, Inc., the leading innovator of grid computing technology and utility computing services for Web applications, today announce support for Woopra, the real-time Web analytics platform. The companies will provide 100 grid-based servers in order to assist Woopra as it experiences a huge market demand prior to official launch.

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Folks. I have a confession to make. I’ve been secretly cheating on all of you for some time now. Oh, and to make matters worse, I’m proud of it.

Yes, you already know that a few months ago I joined Layered Technologies as the Chief Marketing Officer… but I’ve got another on the side. And she’s called Woopra. I’ve been secretly working with Elie Khoury and Jad Younan on this project, and we just unveiled it yesterday at WordCamp, making Beta accounts available for the first time for all participants.

What can I tell you about Woopra? She’s hot, smooth, smart, and sexy. But don’t take my word for it… Here is what Cali from GeekBrief had to say after just a few minutes with Woopra.
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