San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - November 18, 2008 - Rackspace Hosting’s cloud division, Mosso, has expanded its leadership team, naming previous vice president of the product group, Emil Sayegh as its new general manager.

Mr. Sayegh’s responsibilities at Rackspace included the development, marketing and management of new products and services for the company’s managed hosting product line.

Prior to joining Rackspace, Mr. Sayegh spent more than 15 years in the IT industry in various product development and marketing roles. Most recently, Mr. Sayegh was the services marketing and development director at Dell Inc. where he oversaw the global services roadmap. Additionally, Mr. Sayegh served in leadership positions at several notable IT companies including RLX Technologies, Compaq Computers and W.L. Gore and Associates. He holds nine patents in the fields of electronics and telecommunication.

Lanham Napier, CEO, Rackspace Hosting remarked, ”As the VP of our product group, Emil directed the launches of multiple, successful products including the company’s Hosted Microsoft Exchange and our virtualization product set. Our cloud hosting initiatives are extremely important to the company’s future, which is why we’ve selected someone with a winning track record to run that business.”

Rackspace’s cloud hosting division is currently hosting more than 80,000 websites and applications on Cloud Sites, reflecting a 175 percent increase over this time last year. Last month the company unveiled its cloud hosting strategy, including the announcement of two acquisitions and a suite of cloud solutions at the Rackspace Cloud Event. The two newest additions to the product suite, Cloud Files and Cloud Servers, will leverage technology acquired through the acquisitions of Jungle Disk.

Mr. Sayegh remarked, ”I am honored to be joining the cloud division. This is a great opportunity to lead what could be one of the biggest technology evolutions the market has seen - cloud computing. Cloud technologies delivered by Rackspace will provide the cost and scalability advantages of the cloud with Rackspace’s world-leading service approach, making the cloud both affordable and easy to use.”

Mr. Sayegh holds a bachelor of science in Engineering and a master of science in Technology Commercialization from the University of Texas at Austin.

A recognized leader in the global IT marketplace, Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes. Customers choose Rackspace for its hosting specialization and expertise, backed by the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments, by handling infrastructure maintenance and management. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso cloud computing platform and Mailtrust, a provider of business-class hosted email solutions. Rackspace is recognized as one of FORTUNE Magazine’s 100 Best companies to work for, ranking number 32 on the 2008 list. Rackspace’s portfolio of hosted IT services includes managed hosting, email hosting and cloud hosting.

Mosso, LLC is the home of The Hosting Cloud, providing enterprise-grade hosting through an easily managed interface so that developers, designers and IT managers can deploy reliable web applications quickly and easily. Founded by two former Rackspace employees, The Hosting Cloud is built upon a cross platform, clustered-computing architecture.

To learn more about Rackspace, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

For more information, please visit: www.mosso.com.

Dallas, Texas - (The Hosting News) - June 26, 2008 - Web hosting company, Rackspace Managed Hosting, has partnered with Internet and IT services provider, IDS Logic Pvt. Ltd, to offer new online solution services.

IDS Logic Pvt. Ltd provides all types of Information Technology (IT) services to clients internationally. IDS Logic offers web based services such as web hosting, web designing, offshore software development and marketing on the Internet. The company plans to adopt Rackspace’s website updating mandate, and is based in Noida NCR (National Capital Region, New Delhi), India with its sales and support teams in the USA and UK.

The main impetus behind the new product is to eliminate business management issues pertaining to web hosting services in India. While there are many IT companies that assure many benefits such as high uptime, bandwidth and disk space, IDS Logic attempts to distinguish itself by offering a full service approach for IT requirements.

IDS Logic, in joint collaboration with Rackspace, has launched shared web hosting services in India. The hosting service provides a 100 percent money back guarantee for one month of its managed shared hosting service. It also guarantees clients with 100% uptime for websites, along with spam checking as well as virus scanning. The new service is geared toward traffic, and easier navigation.

The company plans to deliver its services to both traditionaly bricks and mortar businesses, as well as more complex service providers.

IDS Logic operates from its offshore development centre located in Noida, India and with sales and support partner offices in UK and USA IDS LOGIC Pvt. Ltd. D-40, IInd Floor, Sector-6 Noida (Delhi NCR) 201301 U.P, INDIA.

IDS Logic Pvt. Ltd is a web based solutions provider to global clients. IDS Logic operates from its offshore development centre located in Noida, India and with sales and support partner offices in UK and USA IDS LOGIC Pvt. Ltd. D-40, IInd Floor, Sector-6 Noida (Delhi NCR) 201301 U.P, INDIA.

Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes. Customers choose Rackspace for its hosting specialization and expertise, backed by the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. By integrating the industry’s best technologies and delivering them as services, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments. Because Rackspace removes the burden of infrastructure maintenance and management, customers can focus on their core business. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso (www.mosso.com) cloud computing platform and Mailtrust (www.mailtrust.com) a provider of business-class hosted email solutions.

To learn more about IDS Logic Pvt. Ltd, please visit: www.idslogic.com.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

London, United Kingdom - (The Hosting News) - May 22, 2008 - Designed to be powered by renewable energy sources, a new green data center, drawing power from a local combined heat and power plant, has been unveiled by Rackspace Managed Hosting.

Using wood chips, waste paper and fibre fuel to generate electricity, hot water and steam, the data center is located in in Slough, Berkshire.
Power for the data centre comes from the UK’s largest dedicated bio-mass energy plant, which is operated by Scottish and Southern Energy. Rackspace has converted a former warehouse on the Slough Trading Estate, to provide 55,000 square feet of net technical space. Construction has been completed and equipment is being installed in the first data hall. The first customers are scheduled to go live in June. The date centre layout has been built to Rackspace specifications, which were designed to better manage customer needs.

Doug Loewe, Managing Director of Rackspace explained, ”This is a fantastic project which will harness bio-mass fuels to power the data centre. Rackspace is committed to being energy efficient and making a real and positive difference to the environment. We also recognize that customers are increasingly looking for suppliers who can help them meet their own environment related goals. By investing in this facility we continue to strive to exceed the environmental expectations of our customers while delivering their hosting needs.”

Rackspace was one of the UK’s first hosting companies to offer carbon neutral hosting in 2006 by planting trees through its relationship with the International Tree Foundation, the world’s longest standing tree planting charity. The company has already planted more than 2,500 trees to offset the carbon emitted through running servers.

Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes. Customers choose Rackspace for its hosting specialization and expertise, backed by the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. By integrating the industry’s best technologies and delivering them as services, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments. Because Rackspace removes the burden of infrastructure maintenance and management, customers can focus on their core business. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso (www.mosso.com) cloud computing platform and Mailtrust (www.mailtrust.com) a provider of business-class hosted email solutions.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - May 2, 2008 - Outlining the support of 2.5 million online votes, from top rated television show, American Idol, Rackspace has issued a new case study.

Rackspace’s AKQA (www.akqa.com) is the world’s number one digital agency, delivering complex interactive experiences and vibrant customer relationship management, along with strategic consulting, branding and pretty well anything that starts with an ‘e’.

Ben Jones, the UK Technical Director for AKQA explained, ”About five years ago we realised the importance of having the right hosting partner. We had been using internal resources and still operate small managed hosting operations, but as the market has developed we quickly realised that bringing a major project to fruition with the velocity that is demanded and keeping it live 24/7 needed huge resource, massive support and constant monitoring. We do not have the desire to become a specialist hosting company - our expertise is in the creation and delivery of highly successful digital solutions for major clients like Nokia, Xbox, Unilever, Microsoft, Nike, Orange, Sainsbury’s and Sky. At this time we looked at the managed hosting market in some detail, researching potential long-term hosting partners and discovered Rackspace(r). That was four years ago and we have not looked back since.”

The company connects ideas and innovation to deliver award-winning results for the worlds leading brands. A key factor in any online business is the final delivery of the creative work. Even the best digital marketing campaign can be destroyed by slow delivery. An unreliable server or serious bandwidth restrictions due to massive demand, all highlight the importance of having the right hosting partner. The right hosting structure Ben Jones is the UK Technical Director for AKQA.

Further information released by the company revealed, ”The key to the success of the Rackspace / AKQA relationship has been their devotion and adherence to Fanatical Suppor - their mantra and guiding philosophy. Rackspace has become a vital member of our team and we now view them as a critical business partner rather than a supplier, much in the same way as we have operating partnerships with Microsoft, Sun and Oracle.”

Mr. Jones continued, ”Our decision to host with Rackspace has paid huge dividends. They have become a major technology provider and now help us directly with the specification, building and set up of appropriate customised servers, load balancing and secure firewall protection for each client campaign website or online application. World Digital leader relies on Rackspace We work together; experts and technologists detailing and recommending the most appropriate solution for each application. You only have to look at a client like 19 Entertainment to realise the scope and importance of getting this right.”

For the record 19 is acknowledged as the world’s most exciting and innovative entertainment company, led by founder Simon Fuller, with a 23-year track record of changing the way in which the world enjoys and interacts with music, television, sport and fashion, creating massive hits like Pop Idol, the planet’s biggest TV franchise, and guiding the careers of household names such as David and Victoria Beckham and other well known names.

Mr. Jones added, ”Managing and hosting the sites for iconic programmes such as American Idol Songwriter were all part of the challenge." You can imagine the problems behind handling up to 2.5 million online votes for contestants, yet Rackspace remained calm and in control by providing burstable bandwidth for the massive influx of traffic whenever it was needed. This combined with the company’s 1-hour hardware replacement and 100% network uptime guarantee has made Rackspace the ideal managed hosting partner for any operation requiring time and volume critical applications. In fact the company is rapidly becoming the hosting partner of choice among UK and US digital agencies.”

Mr. Jones concluded, ”Rackspace guarantees the levels of service our clients expect from us, which is why I am very happy to say that they have actively contributed towards AKQA attaining the enviable position of being the world’s number one digital agency, and I certainly would not hesitate to recommend them to other digital specialists seeking professional Hosting services.

Doug Loewe, Depth of service and technology MD at Rackspace commented, ”We are delighted to have served AKQA for the past four years and it is indicative of the strength and depth of our service and technology that we have been called upon by the world’s leading digital service agency to provide advice and expertise on the development and management of their online facilities and applications.”

Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes. Customers choose Rackspace for its hosting specialization and expertise, backed by the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. By integrating the industry’s best technologies and delivering them as services, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments. Because Rackspace removes the burden of infrastructure maintenance and management, customers can focus on their core business. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso (www.mosso.com) cloud computing platform and Mailtrust (www.mailtrust.com) a provider of business-class hosted email solutions.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

Waltham, Massachusetts - (The Hosting News) - April 28, 2008 - Managed web hosting and IT services firm, Rackspace Managed Hosting, has entered into an agreement with residential property valuation and risk management firm, Pro-Teck Services.

Under the terms of the agreement, Pro-Teck will utilize Rackspace’s Intensive Hosting to support the company’s ProValue platform that requires 24×7 availability to service today’s rapidly evolving financial markets.

Luc Levensohn, Vice President Security and Infrastructure, Pro-Teck Services noted, ”We did a lot of due diligence and determined Rackspace could provide us with the highest level of disaster recovery and system redundancy to protect our clients information while providing the scalability and capacity to support our growth.”

Pro-Teck’s ProValue connects many of the world’s largest financial institutions with the real estate data, modeling and expertise they need to effectively manage their real estate collateral. The system requires robust performance to support a large number of simultaneous connections as vendor and client partners throughout the United States process thousands of daily transactions in real time. The platform also provides extensive archiving, retrieval and data stream capabilities critical to its client’s business operations.

Glenn Reinus, Senior Vice President of worldwide sales, Rackspace remarked, ”Because Pro-Teck’s IT infrastructure was Microsoft-based, they found Rackspace’s Windows expertise and Microsoft Gold Certification a true advantage. Intensive Hosting takes a consultative approach with our enterprise customers. Through our dedicated team of experts, we are able to build a deep working relationship, effectively becoming an integral component of customers’ IT departments. We work alongside Pro-Teck as an extension of its IT department and work diligently for our customer’s success.”

Rackspace’s Intensive Hosting provides Pro-Teck with a fully-managed hosting solution. With primary and failover server locations, advanced custom monitoring services, managed backup and storage, and Windows 2003 Enterprise database services, Pro-Teck relies on Rackspace’s 24/7/365 Fanatical Support(TM) demanded by today’s financial markets.

Last month, Rackspace announced two high-level appointments - Florian Schiebl as European Business Director, and Tarquin Bellinger as Sales Director, to reinforce its European operations. Prior to joining Rackspace, Schiebl was Managing Director of iPass, being responsible for the Central and Eastern European regions. He has also held positions at Bertelsmann, Compaq, Siemens, COLT Telecom and MFN.

Mr. Bellinger has joined Rackspace to lead the Sales and Solutions Engineering team. His previous position was at BT, where he led the company’s 21st Century Network business development programme. Prior to that, he led Cable and Wireless’ global services business division focusing on financial markets, based in New York.

Established in 1977, Pro-Teck Services works with Mortgage Lenders, Mortgage Servicers, Secondary Market Investors, Capital Markets and Property and Casualty Insurers to improve risk management through superior real estate collateral information. Pro-Teck provides a comprehensive suite of services including on-line real estate data, fraud scoring, value modeling, inspections, valuations and appraisals.

Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes, including hosting specialization and expertise, delivering services as an extension of its customers’ IT departments. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso cloud computing platform and Mailtrust provider of business-class hosted email solutions.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

Lexington, Massachusetts - (The Hosting News) - April 4, 2008 - Rackspace Managed Hosting, has joined web application experience management company, Gomez, Inc., in a referral partner agreement, under which Rackspace will use Gomez ExperienceFirst applications.

The Gomez PartnerFirst XF program Referral Partner Agreement will test and measure the performance of its web applications to help ensure they deliver the best possible user experience. Additionally, Rackspace will offer its customers the option to use Gomez services as an extension to the detailed application availability and performance monitoring it provides. These customers will be able to use these services to help improve the quality of the online experience they deliver by capturing and reporting website performance data measured from more than 150 globally-located Internet backbone nodes, and over 40,000 end-user desktops.

Because Gomez website performance testing originates outside the firewall, it enables customers to more realistically experience what their users are experiencing when visiting their websites. Scott White, Director of channel sales, Rackspace remarked, ”Gomez helps us and our customers measure performance so we can continuously improve and deliver better customer experiences.”

Tom Meusel, Vice President, worldwide channel sales for Gomez noted, ”Working with this industry- leading platform supports our ongoing commitment to Fanatical Support. We believe that this service can provide our customers with a distinct advantage in web experience management. Rackspace recognizes the importance of optimal web experiences down to each downloaded object and transaction. Delivering on this level of service requires a class of performance management information provided by Gomez. We look forward to a rewarding relationship with Rackspace for years to come.”

Gomez partners are leveraging the ExperienceFirst platform to validate and enhance their own product and services offerings, and to broaden their offerings through resale and referral arrangements. More information can be found at www.gomez.com/partners/partner-home.php.

Gomez, Inc. is an on-demand infrastructure provider for web application experience management solutions, helping business ensure quality web experiences for their customers. More than 1,000 companies use Gomez ExperienceFirst services worldwide, including 14 of the top 20 most visited websites. Gomez provides a comprehensive solution for managing the web application experience from development through deployment and the entire application life cycle, featuring visual, functional and load testing, actual end-user and active website monitoring, competitive benchmarking, and more than 40,000 data sources worldwide.

Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes. Customers choose Rackspace for its hosting specialization and expertise, backed by the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. By integrating the industry’s best technologies and delivering them as services, Rackspace serves as an extension of its customers’ IT departments. Because Rackspace removes the burden of infrastructure maintenance and management, customers can focus on their core business. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso (www.mosso.com) cloud computing platform and Mailtrust (www.mailtrust.com) a provider of business-class hosted email solutions.

To learn more about Gomez, please visit: www.gomez.com.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

London, United Kingdom - (The Hosting News) - March 12, 2008 - Rackspace managed web hosting services firm, has been chosen by online behavioural targeting technology company, Adknowledge, as Rackspace’s 4000th European customer, for its robust infrastructure, scalable storage, and IT service solutions.

John Cole, Managing Director, Adknowledge UK, remarked, ”We require instant access to over 15 terabytes of behavioural targeting data in the USA and so we knew that we would need a reliable data hosting provider in the UK to help us grow our data set in Europe. Rackspace fit the specifications of our brief and were well within budget, so we went live in December 2007. We have been very impressed by the service so far.”

Doug Loewe, Managing Director, Rackspace EMEA, noted, ”These are very exciting times for us as reaching the 4000th customer is an accolade we are very proud of. I feel confident that our belief in delivering Fanatical Support for our customers will continue to lead to success. While it’s far easier to focus on technology, exceeding customer expectation is the real challenge, which is why we are absolutely committed to customer service. We are delighted to have Adknowledge as one of our customers and look forward to a fruitful relationship with them.”

Rackspace has been selected by Adknowledge to aid it in the launch of two new products - Taglines and Cubics Social advertising. Taglines inserts behaviourally targeted logos and text links to user generated emails, newsletters and news alerts, turning what is essentially an existing cost base into a brand new revenue stream for UGC publishers and ISPs with large volumes of user generated email. Cubics, the social advertising channel of Adknowledge serves targeted ad inventory across hundreds of social media applications, including Facebook, MySpace and Bebo platforms.

Rackspace also announced two high-level appointments - Florian Schiebl as European Business Director, and Tarquin Bellinger as Sales Director, to reinforce its European operations. Prior to joining Rackspace, Schiebl was Managing Director of iPass, being responsible for the Central and Eastern European regions. He has also held positions at Bertelsmann, Compaq, Siemens, COLT Telecom and MFN.

Mr. Bellinger has joined Rackspace to lead the Sales and Solutions Engineering team. His previous position was at BT, where he led the company’s 21st Century Network business development programme. Prior to that, he led Cable and Wireless’ global services business division focusing on financial markets, based in New York.

Adknowledge is a single destination for advertisers looking for quality clicks beyond Google and Yahoo. Adknowledge operates BidSystem.com, a multi-channel behavioural targeting ad network in which advertisers seamlessly bid for traffic in display, email and smaller search engines. Over 50,000 advertisers have used the Adknowledge BidSystem. Additionally, publishers can display advertisements by integrating the AdStation product line of solutions with their website, email list, or search engine.

Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes, including hosting specialization and expertise, delivering services as an extension of its customers’ IT departments. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso cloud computing platform and Mailtrust provider of business-class hosted email solutions.

To learn more about Adknowledge, please visit: www.adknowledge.com.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - January 28, 2008 - Rackspace Managed Hosting, will provide hosting services to on-demand third-party logistics (3PL) software firm, 3PL Central, for its Warehouse Management System (WMS) application, designed to service small to mid-size warehouse management functionality.

John Watkins, President and CEO, 3PL Central noted, ”Through our web-based 3PL Warehouse Manager, we provide an on-demand warehouse management system focused on public and third party warehouses with the functionality necessary to run multi-customer, multi-warehouse and multi-user facilities. The 3PL Warehouse Manager is able to support these multi-user facilities by providing each customer a unique URL login to view real-time global inventory, up-to-date transaction reports, EDI integration capabilities, email notifications, and offer other advanced WMS features, all fully branded for a customer’s specific website. By delivering our warehouse management software over the internet versus having our customers purchase and deploy the software, we help reduce overhead IT costs, making it easy for any warehouse operator, even with little technical skill, to operate and inventory a vast warehouse seamlessly. We needed an infrastructure with high availability, scalability, security and expertise found at Rackspace to support our business-critical applications and growing customer base. Knowing that Rackspace has helped thousands of other software-as-a-service companies grow and succeed is a huge value.”

Glenn Reinus, Senior Vice President of worldwide sales, Rackspace commented, ”Applications like 3PL Central’s must be supported by a strong, highly available, and most importantly, readily scaleable infrastructures. We believe that Rackspace delivers all of this on a world-class infrastructure and expertise that software-as-a-service customers require. Rackspace’s dedicated account teams work as an extension of 3PL Central’s own IT staff by delivering 24×7x365 Fanatical Support, helping them grow and succeed.”

3PL Central is a new breed of 3PL software provider offering on-demand supply chain software focused on the needs of 3PLs, public and third party warehouses. 3PL Central provides a variety of software including 3PL Warehouse Manager, the first on-demand Warehouse Management System (WMS) purpose-built to provide public warehouse operations enterprise-class WMS functionality. All of 3PL Central’s products are offered via an on-demand, or Software as a Service (SaaS) model, enabling 3PLs and public warehouses access to cutting edge software at a low monthly fee and significantly reducing the total cost of ownership of supply chain execution software from the traditional ”buy, upgrade and maintain” software cycle.

A recognized global managed hosting firm, Rackspace Managed Hosting is a service organization delivering enterprise-level web infrastructure and managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 15,000 customers across eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year since the company’s inception.

To learn more about 3PL Central, please visit: www.3plcentral.com.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - February 20, 2008 - Managed web hosting services firm, Rackspace Managed Hosting, has entered into a partnership agreement with SolutionSet, designed for participation in co-marketing activities.

SolutionSet delivers full-service brand and technology capabilities from its Palo Alto, California headquarters and offices in San Francisco, including the enterprise-class Community Services Platform (CSP), which has been deployed in a variety of business situations such as global sales and marketing portals, product marketing, family/parenting sites, political campaigns and developer groups. The platform helps clients implement online communities, making it relevant for their employees, partners and customers. It can also further grow clients’ businesses through highly targeted ad/marketing campaigns, community metric management and partner monetization programs.

Kent Langley, Director of Networking and Systems, SolutionSet noted, ”As a leading provider of web development, digital marketing and brand development services, we utilize Rackspace’s hosting expertise to ensure our clients’ sites and projects are operating on solid, scalable infrastructures. As a result, trust is a critical factor when choosing hosting for our clients and we know that we can trust Rackspace to treat our clients well. As a member of Rackspace’s Partner Network, communication and escalation paths are clear and consistent. It is our mutual clients that are the overall benefactors of the SolutionSet and Rackspace relationship.”

Scott White, Director of Channel Sales, Rackspace added, ”Rackspace provides SolutionSet clients with a fully managed and customizable hosting solution on which to grow their mission-critical sites and applications, backed by dedicated account teams providing 24×7 Fanatical Support. We look for synergistic relationships with industry leaders like SolutionSet and their CSP solution that enable us to add greater value to our customer base and support our ongoing commitment to Fanatical Support.”

SolutionSet is an agency that combines user-centered creative and leading-edge technology to deliver the next new thinking in web development, digital marketing, and brand experience. The company ranks No. 95 in this year’s Inc. 500 list and No. 10 in the IT Services category, with three-year growth rate of 1,582.1 percent. Founded in 2002, SolutionSet specializes in creating marketing and productivity solutions for clients ranging from Inc. 500 companies to incubator stage start-ups.

Rackspace delivers a diverse suite of enterprise-class hosted IT services to businesses of all sizes, including hosting specialization and expertise, delivering services as an extension of its customers’ IT departments. Rackspace’s portfolio of companies also includes the Mosso cloud computing platform and Mailtrust provider of business-class hosted email solutions.

To learn more about SolutionSet, please visit: www.solutionset.com.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - January 28, 2008 - Rackspace Managed Hosting, has revealed a new corporate strategy, based upon a reconfiguration of its identity, to reflect its intention to shift into IT hosting, while transforming traditional IT functions into consumable services via the web.

Lanham Napier, President and CEO, Rackspace noted, ”Rackspace has been focused on Fanatical Support® since the beginning - it’s in our DNA - and our new identity reflects that. Now we see the industry shifting to a service-based paradigm. Fanatical Support has been the key to our managed hosting success for the past nine years and will continue to propel us as we embark upon this new era of IT hosting.”

As more enterprises transition from purchasing in-house computing assets to leveraging service providers, Rackspace now offers a suite of hosted IT services that are more reliable and provide better value, including virtualization, hosted mail, custom application support, back-end IT and storage.

The newly-launched name, Rackspace, drops the Managed Hosting” terminology, signifying Rackspace’s new breadth of hosted services supporting companies of all sizes. In addition to Rackspace’s traditional managed hosting offering, its venture companies also complement the new strategy. They include:
- Mosso, the Rackspace cloud computing brand
- Mailtrust, the Rackspace business-class hosted email brand

The new logo incorporates Rackspace’s popular ”FANATIGUY” icon, which better reflects Rackspace’s people-centric culture and award-winning Fanatical Support. It also highlights the company’s transition from servers to services. Rackspace is moving beyond the historical hardware focus of the web hosting industry and towards a services strategy, assembling the best technologies in the industry and delivering them as a service. Fanatical Support has always been the key differentiator for Rackspace, but through the strategy shift, service will be accentuated even more.

Daniel Golding, Vice President and Research Director, Tier 1 Research noted, ”As the IT hosting sector evolves, it is becoming that the true competitive differentiator is customer support. As the very idea of IT hosting makes the leap into enterprise adoption, those firms that can offer truly outstanding support will come out on top.”

Mr. Napier added, ”As Rackspace leads the industry’s transition to hosted services, we will build upon our core managed hosting business and Fanatical Support. Our new services will compliment our existing portfolio allowing customers to easily offload more and more IT functions to Rackspace.”

Since the company’s founding in 1998, Rackspace has grown to more than 2,000 employees world wide, powering through the dotcom bust and moving up to become a leader in the managed hosting space. Growing at approximately 50 percent per year in revenue since the company’s inception nearly ten years ago, Rackspace has been named Microsoft’s Hosting Provider of the Year three times, The American Business Awards Best Customer Service Organization twice and a Leader in Gartner Inc.’s annual North American Web Hosting Magic Quadrant since 2004.

A recognized global managed hosting firm, Rackspace Managed Hosting is a service organization delivering enterprise-level web infrastructure and managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 15,000 customers across eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year since the company’s inception.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

Dedicated webhosting, servers, and providers available at The Hosting News.

Blacksburg, Virginia - (Website Hosting Directory) - January 24, 2008 - Business-class email hosting specialist and the mail division of Rackspace, Webmail.us, LLC, has issued a corporate brand change from Webmail to Mailtrust, as it continues to provide business-class email hosting for over 85,000 businesses worldwide.

Pat Matthews, President of Mailtrust noted, ”Because email is so mission-critical, trust is crucial in choosing your email provider. We wanted a name that would reflect that. The new name aligns our corporate mission with our reputation as a trusted email provider. We understand how serious it is to give control of such a mission-critical operation such as email to an outside vendor. Mailtrust indicates our dedication to becoming the world’s most trusted provider of business email hosting.”

The choice of the Mailtrust brand is a direct result of feedback from the company’s extensive customer base, who indicated that the most important reason for choosing Mailtrust as their email hosting provider was ”trust.” The name Mailtrust also highlights business-class email as the core of the company’s service offering and its focus to be the mail specialist that businesses can trust.

In addition to the new company brand, Mailtrust announced the addition of Managed Microsoft Exchange Hosting to its product portfolio. Microsoft Exchange is viewed by many as the corporate email standard and was a natural addition to Mailtrust’s product line. With the addition of Managed Microsoft Exchange to Mailtrust’s flagship Noteworthy® email hosting service, customers now have a choice of platforms depending on their size, functionality and budgetary needs. Businesses currently running Microsoft Exchange in-house can now offload their corporate email systems to Mailtrust and refocus their IT resources more strategically, without having to alter the user experience for their employees or move to a completely different platform.

Philbert Shih, research analyst for Tier1 Research, a division of The 451 Group noted, ”A dual mail offering of Managed Microsoft Exchange and Mailtrust’s own Noteworthy brand is a strong step forward for the company. Offering a choice between the Noteworthy and Managed Microsoft Exchange platforms is a strong selling point that should facilitate new customer acquisition and position Mailtrust for further growth as demand for collaborative and mobile messaging solutions accelerates.”

Although the company is changing its brand name, Mailtrust will continue to strive to deliver the industry’s premier business-class email services for organizations around the world. As part of the change, Mailtrust will launch a new website that better reflects the company’s mission and brand.

Mailtrust, a Rackspace company, provides more than 85,000 small, medium, and geographically dispersed companies with business-class email hosting. The company manages and maintains the email service and hosting infrastructure, freeing up IT resources and eliminating the need for customers to purchase email-related hardware, software, and security services, at rates designed to be at a fraction of the cost of purchasing and managing email services in-house. Founded in 1999, and acquired by Rackspace in 2007, Mailtrust is headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia and was recently named the 217th fastest growing, privately held company in America by Inc. Magazine.

A recognized leader in the global managed hosting market, Rackspace Managed Hosting is a world-class service organization delivering enterprise-level web infrastructure and managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving over 10,000 customers across eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s Fanatical Support. Through trusted partnerships with its customers, Rackspace serves as an extension of the IT department, to enable customers to focus on core business strategies. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year since its inception.

For more information about Mailtrust, please visit: www.mailtrust.com.

To learn more about Rackspce Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.

San Antonio, Texas - (The Hosting News) - January 21, 2008 - Rackspace Managed Hosting, has revealed the recipient of its inaugural FANATI Award for Outstanding Customer Service, to honor the customer that has best demonstrated customer service excellence.

Website design firm for small to medium sized businesses, Websketching, is the 2007 winner. As an industry-leading service company, Rackspace introduced the FANATI to recognize the customer service excellence of other companies in an effort to promote customer service among all businesses today. Award applications, available only to Rackspace customers, were accepted online through the MyRackspace customer portal. Customers completed the online applications, which included questions regarding how the company delivers and tracks customer service as well as success stories of going above and beyond for customers. Rackspace then reviewed the applications and a short-list of nine finalists was announced.

Christine DeGraff, Co-Founder and partner of Websketching noted, ”By limiting the geographical area we serve, we can take the time to personally meet with our clients’ at their place of business so that we can better determine the needs of their business. My clients trust that our goal is to help their business succeed, just like Rackspace. In just one year at Rackspace, I have seen Fanatical Support firsthand. It means that I do not have to wonder if my request has been received or when it will be done; but a peace of mind knowing that my request is always immediately acknowledged and that every request is treated as important and completed in as little time as possible. This is something I try to duplicate to my clients.”

Finalists moved on to the second round of judging which involved two scoring categories. First, their application was critiqued and graded by a panel of five service industry experts including Joe Wheeler, Executive Director of The Service Profit Chain Institute; best-selling authors and speakers Drs. Kevin and Jackie Freiberg; Phil Terry, CEO of the Creative Good; and Frederick Mendler, Vice President of Fanatical Support for Rackspace’s Managed segment.

In addiiton, in order to validate the finalists’ applications, a customer satisfaction survey was sent to the nine finalists’ customers. Based on the survey results and the judge’s scores, Websketching proved their customer service excellence and came out on top due in large part to a near-perfect customer satisfaction score. Rackspace will begin accepting customer applications for the 2008 FANATI in July.

In comments left on the survey about Websketching, Patricia Smith, Secretary of The Woodstown-Pilesgrove Business Association said, ”As a business association, we were in need of a website; however none of our members had any technical experience. Websketching listened to our thoughts and ideas for what we wanted and developed a product that perfectly encompassed our vision. Websketching was extremely thoughtful of our needs and guided us throughout the entire process in a pleasant and non-intimidating manner. They designed a website that is both professional in nature and visually attractive. Working with Websketching was like working with a friend.”

Rackspace announced the creation of the award at its Customer Conference, held every October at its San Antonio-based headquarters. Representatives from Websketching will attend Rackspace’s annual company kick-off this January, where they will be presented with the FANATI trophy by Rackspace President and CEO, Lanham Napier.

Mr. Napier remarked, ”As the home of Fanatical Support, we wanted to know how our customers approach customer service in their respective industries. As a company whose mission is to become one of the world’s greatest service companies and which is a two-time winner of the American Business Awards’s Best Customer Service Organization, we believe we are experts on customer service. Through the nomination process, we saw many of our own customers that take a similar approach to customer service and we’re glad to be able to recognize the one that stood out the most.”

Websketching is a NJ based web design company offering a full range of website design, development and marketing services to clients located in the NJ/PA/DE tri-state area. Websketching specializes in creating custom website designs that can be equipped with their proprietary content management system.

Viewed as a critical investment in customer communication, the MyRackspace portal is continually evolving with major updates released on a bi-monthly basis. Additional new features include:

— Firewall Control Panel allowing authorized users to manage firewall permissions in real-time

— Suggestions Center enabling greater collaboration among the Rackspace customer community and creating an additional channel for Rackspace to listen to customer requests and share its extensive hosting knowledge

— Ticket attachment giving customers the option to securely attach a document to support tickets and provide more information to their support team about issues or queries

— Release Communication Center containing portal release information as new versions of the MyRackspace portal are launched every other month

Upcoming developments to the MyRackspace portal will include customer access to historical availability monitoring data as well as Managed Backup Threshold Alerts to provide an early warning system that notifies customers before reaching critical backup subscription usage.

A recognized global managed hosting firm, Rackspace Managed Hosting is a service organization delivering enterprise-level web infrastructure and managed services to businesses of all sizes. Serving more than 15,000 customers across eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry’s best technologies for each customer need and delivers it as a service via the company’s award-winning Fanatical Support. Founded in 1998, Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year since the company’s inception.

To learn more about Websketching, please visit: www.websketching.com.

For more information about Rackspace Managed Hosting, please visit: www.rackspace.com.