The new load balancing solution joins a list of services that the company has automated.

SoftLayer announced it has added an automated, hardware-driven load balancing solution to its portfolio of automated managed services.

The company's enterprise-class load balancing solution utilizes industry-standard techniques to balance traffic among 2 or more servers. The company claims that it can be instantly activated and configured, and servers can be added to or removed from the balancing pool on-demand with no downtime.

"Historically, provisioning and managing load balancing has required a high degree of expertise and considerable person hours, making it cost-prohibitive for many site owners," said Ric Moseley, SoftLayer Vice President of Engineering. "We've lowered the cost barrier to this dynamic tool by creating a fully automated solution that integrates into our leading, easy-to-use customer portal and API."

The new load balancing solution joins a long list of services that the company has automated including hardware firewalls, enterprise backup, storage solutions, and network management. "One of our fundamental priorities is to automate services that traditionally have been overpriced because they required physical people," said Mr. Moseley. "We want to give our customers total control, so they can have a virtual datacenter at their disposal. It helps them lower costs, increase efficiency, and bring services to market faster."