Todd Abrams, President of Layered Technologies, tells us that the introduction of the company’s new Astro Web hosting platform has customers up and running within minutes and revenues on the march.

TopHosts: Were there any special circumstances, company shortcomings or customer demands that spurred the notion of the Astro Platform? How did the idea first gain traction?

TA: Layered Tech had invested heavily in updating and integrating many of our backend systems - ordering, billing, inventory management, tracking, purchasing and support. Basically, our business was growing at such a rapid clip that we wanted to dramatically improve the customer experience with us. Consolidating our operations into an agile, scalable, business management solution enabled us to do that.

But we also realized toward the end of this integration effort that we now had insight into our inventory levels in ways we didn't before. Now we possessed, with high confidence, up-to-the-minute "what" and "when" pieces of the inventory puzzle. And because all the other components of the ordering process had been integrated on the backend, we could put that information into action by accelerating the availability and provisioning of servers for both customers and partners. Today, customers who take advantage of the rapid deployment options, have their hosting solution up and running within minutes.

TopHosts: Were there specific types of Layered Tech customers that Astro made the most sense for initially? Is the Astro platform designed to meet the needs of the entire Layered Tech customer base?

TA: Initially, we found that a couple of different types of customers derive immediate value. One is the smaller business needing to get their public sites up and running quickly and efficiently, at relatively low cost. The other is the mid-sized enterprise with a departmental R&D project or other Web initiative which their IT department doesn't have the resources to provision quickly; in that case, we can serve as an adjunct to their own server capacity and get them up and running swiftly.

As we continue adding features and functionality to our rapid deployment platform - such as the recent addition of Windows Server 2008 OS - we anticipate wider adoption by mid-sized enterprises.

TopHosts: Since the January launch of Astro what has been the primary feedback from Layered Tech's customers? What gains in company efficiencies have been realized? What needs to be done to further enhance or improve the platform?

TA: Anecdotally, we've been gratified to receive a number of positive comments from customers who have used the Astro platform to purchase their servers from us. They are surprised and pleased that the system works as described: within 30 minutes of payment confirmation, they are good to go. On the numbers side, we've seen our revenues double over the last few months, from servers bought using the rapid deployment option.

Looking ahead, we will continue adding hosting options and configurations for rapid deployment. We are listening to our customers and letting them tell us what they want - we'll respond with appropriate features when we're confident we can launch with the same level of success as the original introduction of Astro.

TopHosts: Your company has invested heavily into the virtualization stream. What benefits does the Layered product suite offer that's not available elsewhere?