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Get Support the Way You Want – Live Chat Support Now Available
LOL, BRB, and TY
That’s right, we understand that lingo and see lots of those acronyms flying across our screen now that we officially launched live chat support. And now you have one more medium to contact us for help.
(For those that don’t know–LOL = Laughing Out Loud, BRB = Be Right Back and TY = Thank You.)
With the average day at the office consisting of multitasking phone calls, meetings, email and more, live chat can really make life a little easier. With live chat you can hold a conversation with our support team in the middle of a conference call or in the middle of checking your email. It allows you to get the most out of your time while getting real time answers to your questions.
The next time you need support, just log into your control panel and look for the live chat link in the upper right hand corner.
Discussing SaaS live on VoiceAmerica.com Tomorrow
Global Software as a Service (SaaS) revenues are expected to soar 22% this year, from $6.6 billion in 2008 to $8 billion in 2009, according to a recent study by research giant Gartner, Inc. By 2013, those numbers are expected to double. Leading the charge, home-based businesses already doubled their SaaS adoption in 2008, growing 92% to $2.3 million reports Access Markets International.
The SaaS revolution is real. You can see from the numbers above that more and more businesses are starting to jump in. That’s why our own Pat Matthews, General Manager of Rackspace Email & Apps, is participating in a live podcast on VoiceAmerica tomorrow. During this live show, we hope to explore the benefits of this shift to SaaS for small businesses with other leaders in the SaaS industry.
Ben Kepes, editor of cloudave.com, will be moderating the show live on Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 10 am ET.
You can learn more the show and gain access to the live feed at VoiceAmerica.
Using Internet Explorer for Outlook Web Access (OWA)
If you signed up for Microsoft Exchange, you can access OWA (Outlook Web Access). OWA is the cross-platform, web-based application that allows you to access Exchange accounts online. It’s the way Microsoft provides webmail capabilities for Exchange.
The Microsoft OWA web interface has two versions: OWA Premium and OWA Light.
Which version you’re presented with is based on which browser you use. OWA Premium is only accessible when using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. If you’re using any other browser, you’ll end up using OWA Light. As the name Premium suggests, this version most closely replicates Outlook’s high-end functionality and experience. The Light version has reduced functionality and looks different from the OWA premium version.
Check out a video demonstration of OWA Premium from Microsoft.
The first question we get when folks try to use OWA in another browser is usually, “Why doesn’t OWA Premium work in non-Internet Explorer browsers?”
There is a reason for two versions. No, it’s not part of a widespread plot by Microsoft to force us to use their product for full OWA functionality. According to the Microsoft Exchange Team’s blog, (scroll down to the last section called “Why doesn’t Premium work on Firefox?“).
You may be wondering, “What’s in the premium version that’s not in the Light version?” Quite a bit, actually. Here’s a list of what OWA Premium includes that the Light version does not (from the Microsoft Exchange team’s blog):
- Tasks module
- Task-specific properties (only the text of the task items can be seen)
- Search for mail items (you can only search Contacts and the Address Book)
- Reminders
- HTML composition (no HTML editing or formatting options, only text composition)
- Flags and Categories
- Weekly view in Calendars (the daily view is the only view)
- Free/Busy grid for Appointment/Meeting Scheduling Assistant (only “Suggested Times” are given)
- Spell Check
- Conversation View
- Account Quota information
- Recover Deleted Items
- Calendar month view
- Add/edit distribution lists
- Public Folder access
- S/MIME features
- Add/edit rules
- Open Other User’s Mailbox (with special permissions)
- View Shared Calendars, Tasks, Notes, Contacts, Inbox, Inbox subfolder and Sent Items (with special permissions)
As you can see, there are some major collaboration features available in the OWA Premium version. This is the major reason we suggest using IE. In addition, there are some added abilities of OWA Premium that you may not know about.
Have questions about these special capabilities? Ask us.
Launch: Rackspace Email 7.0
As a Product Manager, I get pumped whenever we release a new version of our products. This is especially true of the latest release of Rackspace Email 7.0. Over the past six months, the development team worked extremely hard to build exciting new features for me (yes, I use the product every day) and, more importantly, for our customers. Among the highlights of this release:
- Calendar enhancements to provide greater control, flexibility and collaboration in scheduling
- The ability to access features by clicking the right mouse button
- Support for the Google Chrome browser and improved support for Firefox 3
Here’s a short video that I put together to introduce you to some of the features:
These are but a few of the changes. In upcoming blog posts, I will dive deeper into these and other improvements that are part of 7.0.
What’s in a Name?
Over the years, we’ve gone through several iterations of the company name. Like a brilliant artist naming his masterpiece, we’ve tinkered with a few names but just can’t seem to make up our minds. Picking the right name has been more challenging than creating our premium email service. But we won’t have to worry about it as Mailtrust is losing the name altogether and becoming a part of the Rackspace brand. We’ll still maintain our focus on email and support – while leveraging the great brand built by Rackspace. Before we do, let’s take a moment of silence and look back at all the identities we’ve gone through.
fieldParty.com – approx. 1999 – 2001
Two college students (Bill and Pat) dreaming big in a bar at the height of the tech bubble. What came out of those planning sessions was the events bulletin company that was fieldParty.com. They worked out of an apartment in Blacksburg, VA in their underwear. Both the name and the bubble were destined to die a miserable death.
Exedent – approx. 2001 – 2002
fieldParty.com wasn’t taking off as planned. But surprisingly, a little side service, “email hosting,” was. In an adept maneuver not unlike a ballet dancer on their tippy toes, they switched gears, dropped the fieldParty business, and adopted “email” as the core business strategy. They worked out of a basement in Northern Virginia in their underwear.
Excedent Technologies – approx. 2002 – 2005
Exedent sounded too much like “accident.” The letter “C” was added and we became Excedent Technologies, a very corporate sounding name. I joined around this time, and worked out of the same basement in my underwear.
Webmail.us – approx. 2005 – 2008
We couldn’t get Webmail.com, but got lucky with Webmail.us and launched the site in 2003. This was originally just the website and service name, i.e. “Webmail.us, a service of Excedent Technologies.” But in 2005 Pat decided once again to change the company name. We moved to the Corporate Research Center in Blacksburg, VA around this time. In my mind, this was the start of a new life. The company grew up, and we actually had to dress to go to work.
Mailtrust – approx 2008 – 2009
Webmail.us became too confusing, and there were too many marketing issues with it. Around this time, Webmail.us was acquired by Rackspace and we changed our name to “Mailtrust” a few months after. You can read Pat’s explanation of the name change. We had by this time moved out of the CRC and invaded the spaces at the University Mall still in Blacksburg, VA. The company matured and graduated from the nurturing nest that was our startup cocoon.
Rackspace – from now until….
So here we are, ten years and half a dozen name changes later, and we’ve finally arrived at where we want to be. We’ll drop our independent name completely and become a part of the biggest brand in hosting—Rackspace. A lot has changed since those two college kids thought up a ridiculous name for a company. So rest in peace Mailtrust, formerly Webmail.us, formerly Excedent Technologies, formerly Exedent, formerly fieldParty.com. It will be sad to see you go.
Impact of the Month Award for April
Every month the Blacksburg office has a company all-hands meeting to talk about updates, celebrate birthdays, give out prizes for contests, and recognize someone for the “Impact of the Month” award. All of this while enjoying lunch and cake on the company. It’s great being able to come together as a team, spend a few minutes catching up with people, and realizing how big our company has grown.
We give out an award that recognizes an employee that has gone above and beyond the call of duty to create a positive impact for the company. It’s great to watch my co-workers receive this award and 
hear how they’ve impacted our company. This month was especially great. I got to hand out this award to one of my team members.
I nominated Leslie S. for this award because of her outstanding performance and dedication to our billing team. She provides unconditional support to our employees and most importantly, our customers.
Congratulations Leslie! You deserve it!
2 Billion Emails Served
Today during a company lunch our CTO, Bill Boebel, ran through some of our numbers. He didn’t present financial numbers, instead he showed us all some really interesting data points for the month of April. It is always interesting to stop for a minute and reflect on what we have accomplished. So what did April look like? In April we…
- Had customers access our system from 137 out of the 195 countries in the world
- Now have over 200 employees focusing on providing email services to our customers
- Have over 1,300 servers powering email for over 1,100,000 business users
Of course he saved the best for last…
- 2 Billion emails served in the month of April
Amazing, isn’t it?
Transparency Matters
We know that communication is extremely important to all of our customers. We appreciate this fact so much that we developed an internal tool to further facilitate communicating with our customers.
The second version of this tool, internally named Broadcast, was just launched. This is an internal tool that allows us to update our system status page, control panel page and internal pages to alert employees and customers of outages, planned maintenance or other important information. The beauty of the tool does not stop there. We can also alert specific customers by email or text messages sent directly from the tool to the account administrator.
If you are currently a customer, this is a great time to update your contact information in the control panel to make sure you receive updates from the new Broadcast tool.
We pride ourselves as a company on transparency. We admit that we are not above having issues. The important part is that we want to be upfront and timely in letting our customers know what they can expect at any given time. This tool facilitates that transparency.
Rackspace Hosts a GNU/Linux Legend
On April 20th, we hosted a very special guest from the Free Software Foundation and GNU/Linux software 
community. Our special guest was, none other than Richard Stallman, author of the GPL free software license and the bulk of the GNU+Linux operating system that most Linux distros rely on today (including gcc!).
Stallman was in town to lecture on Free Software at Trinity University, but by a lucky turn of events, he stayed at my house for two nights! Since I had his ear, I lured him to the Rack for an FSF.org book signing, and then lunch with a few of our uber geeky GNU/Linux guys. We all had fun and I think that we all learned just how far geeky the geek spectrum goes.
Later that night, our user group (xcssa.org) attended and recorded Stallman’s Trinity lecture. I helped Stallman sell off the last of the FSF.org books and t-shirts, raising over $2,100 in funds for the Free Software Foundation.
I must say, hosting Richard Stallman in my home and within my various personal and professional geek circles was a once in a lifetime experience.
For all the photos and details, see the XCSSA.org photo site.
Glimpse into Hackathon 7 Projects
Hackathon 7 is underway at the Mailtrust office and there are lots of interesting projects being worked on. I want to highlight just a few to show you they type of projects being worked on:
Please Note: Projects that are showcased as a part of this event may or may not make it into the Mailtrust product suite. The event is designed to spark creativity and promote innovation inside our organization. None of the information shown here is intended to infer product direction or future direction of our organization.
Forgot attachment or subject?
Mike Bulman is working on adding checks to Noteworthy Webmail that will alert you if you forgot to add an attachment or a subject line.
Noteworthy Webmail Mobile for iPhone
Khaled and Will Wolf are working on a new Noteworthy Webmail Mobile interface design for the iPhone.
Adding some fresh paint to the office
Bob Black and Amanda Swetnam teamed up to add some color to one of the new conference rooms we have in our office.
These are only a couple of the projects being worked on today—there are over 25 people working on projects today. There is lots of energy in the office and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a couple people trying to knock out more than one project today.