Softlayer, while not as cheap as a straight ahead colo, strikes a nice balance between cloud and bare metal. You can provision metal on demand and manage hardw

Softlayer, while not as cheap as a straight ahead colo, strikes a nice balance between cloud and bare metal. You can provision metal on demand and manage hardware servers via an API. They also have data centers across the world and services like managed SAN/NAS storage. Worth a look for sure.