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A Look Back At 2009

December 30th, 2009 by Nell-Marie Colman

There’s nothing like working at the Rack (aka Rackspace)—we work hard and we play hard. And we love being fanatical for our customers. It’s been another great year for us. Here’s a look at our year’s highlights, as well as events that impacted our industry:

Want to help us make 2010 even better? We’d love to hear from you!

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Search All Your Rackspace Email on Your iPhone with reMail

December 16th, 2009 by Cameron Nouri

You know this situation: You’re traveling and you need to look up your flight confirmation, meeting time, or hotel reservation. All this information is in your email. We partnered up with the team at reMail to offer Rackspace Email customers a solution to this problem—and get a great deal at the same time!

reMail is an iPhone application that downloads all your email to your phone and lets you search it instantly. If you’re a frequent traveler, having all your emails on your phone is a big deal: Your life is in your email. reMail puts all your email in your pocket.

reMail also offers the most powerful search features – much better than the iPhone’s built-in client: You can search for fields, use boolean operators, and type in “ste*” to find both “steve” and “stephen”.

And now reMail integrates with Rackspace Email. Rackspace customers can download reMail in the App Store and add Rackspace Email support for $0.99 (instead of $3.99 for other types of email accounts).

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Out with the Old, In with the New

December 14th, 2009 by Pat Matthews

For about the last ten years, most businesses have managed email in one of two main ways:

In-House Email Hosting
By purchasing server software, client software, server hardware, and an IT staff to manage it, a business can host their own email in-house.

Bundled Hosting
Other businesses use the email service that is bundled with another service, such as their domain registration. GoDaddy, for example, offers website hosting and email hosting when you sign up for their domain registration services.

But the trend is beginning to turn, as businesses are starting to move toward a new way:

Cloud Hosting
When a business chooses Rackspace Email & Apps or Google Apps to host their email, they are putting their email “in the cloud.” With cloud hosting, your data is stored online and backed up in multiple locations, and there is no server software for you to install and upgrade. You purchase the specific services you need, and you only pay for what you use.

For businesses that are currently hosting their own email in-house, there are numerous benefits of moving into the cloud. We’ve detailed them on our Top 10 Reasons page. And our Case Studies page highlights the stories of our many customers who have transitioned away from an in-house system and into the cloud, with much relief.

But we’re also seeing companies moving away from bundled services—and they’re moving away in droves. The bottom line is that, even though bundled services have a few of the same benefits of being in the cloud, the quality of their email service is often very poor. Frequent outages, terrible support, and limited features are some common complaints.

We believe in the cloud. We believe it helps businesses save money and work smarter. And since it’s sometimes intimidating for businesses to make the transition away from the “old way of doing things,” we’re putting resources into making it easier for businesses to make the transition. That’s why we released our new Migration App, so businesses can migrate mailboxes into the cloud with ease.

Are you ready to move into the cloud?

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Making the Cloud Work for You

December 2nd, 2009 by Michael Ferranti

There is a lot of confusion currently about cloud computing. Questions abound both in terms of what it is and what it is not. And of course, there is a healthy dose of disagreement on whether it is really the next big thing.

Here at Rackspace, we think that it is and we are investing heavly in making it work for your business. But many businesses are not quite sure, and understandably so. There is risk, as well as reward, in early adoption of new technology.

A new survey taken at the Mid-Sized Enterprise Summit West reveals that while some business are actively embracing the cloud, and others have already implemented 1-2 cloud-based apps, most are curious but hesitant (see graphic below).

This hesitation on the part of medium-size businesses comes in part, I believe, from not understanding what the cloud is and how it can work with, not against, their current IT setup. Moving to the cloud doesn’t mean ditching your current systems entirely. Instead, it can be a process that lasts a number of years, making sure that you’re comfortable with the changes and their impact on your business.

How many years? Well that depends on you and your business. Over time, the trend will be to the All Cloud Enterprise, but to get there, firms will move through a series of stages (see graphic above). The most important thing in all this, however, is making sure the cloud works for you, not the other way around.

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©2009 Rackspace US, Inc.