Rackspace has been recognized as A Best Company to Work for in Texas, coming in at #30 in the Large Companies category. The honor comes from the Texas Association of Business (TAB), the Texas State Council of the Society for Human Resources Management (TSC-SHRM) and Best Companies group. The 2010 list names companies with best practices among Texas employers and was created to recognize the best employers in the state – the ones who make it a priority to create better workplaces for their employees.

Each day, Rackspace reaffirms its commitment to building a culture of service, one in which Rackers come to work and volunteer their best each day. Recognitions such as this confirm our mission to become the world’s greatest service company.

Racker Kathy Kersten was at the awards ceremony, held in Austin TX and had this to say, “It is exciting to see Rackspace listed as one of the Best Companies to Work for in Texas.  We made the list because Rackers believe that this is an awesome place to work, and that is a really cool feeling.” Kersten goes on to say, “Rackers know that our culture and company is special and it is fun to know that other Texans will recognize this distinction as well!  Go Rackers!”  

To read the full story on Rackspace and all companies recognized, check out the February edition of Texas Monthly.

Since the January 12 earthquake devastated Haiti, there has been a critical shortage of supplies, manpower and assistance to help the Haitian people through their crisis.

Beginning today, the hosting community is coming together as an industry to do our part to help in the relief effort  by launching a new Web site.  Although normally fiercely competitive, as members of a common industry, we know we can help far more as a group than we could individually.

We know that no organization is better suited to the integrity of large relief efforts than the American Red Cross.  So every dollar donated through our site goes directly to them, an organization that can make the biggest difference in disaster relief.

This is a joint effort between Peer1 Hosting, GoGrid, The Planet, ServInt, Site5,VPS.Net and Rackspace, but we hope many others in web hosting and cloud computing will join us by making a donation. With the generosity of our combined groups of customers, employees and others, we know we can make a difference. If you’re one of our industry partners and want to join us, contact us at: info@hostingforhaiti.com about joining the cause.

Then, we hope you’ll spread the word by sharing the link and information on the project.  Follow the progress of the effort on Twitter by following @hostingforhaiti.  Or use the hash tag #hostingforhaiti.  It’s all for a good cause and will provide immediate assistance to tens of thousands of Haitians in need.

Stay tuned to see what good things we can do when the hosting industry partners together!

Yesterday, a story broke around the world about a recent cyber attack that appears to have originated in China, involving Google and many other companies.  Rackspace was a very small part of this situation and did everything possible to assist in resolving it.  No customer data at Rackspace was compromised or altered as a result of this action. We were mentioned as one of the target companies.

Here’s what we told the media who asked us about it:

Rackspace hosts tens of thousands of websites for customers and we take every precaution to make them safe and secure.   As a hosting and cloud computing company, we run the servers and operating systems for our customer’s websites, but customers run their own applications on those servers.  In this case, a server at Rackspace was compromised, disabled, and we actively assisted in the investigation of the cyber attack, fully cooperating with all affected parties.   Cyber attacks are a common occurrence in today’s online world, and we work every day to combat them and make our servers safe for our customers.

It’s difficult to share any more beyond the statement as we are committed to the privacy and security of the tens of thousands of customers we serve daily.  As a tech company, we know we need to remain diligent to prevent future incidents.  As always, our customers come first.  Here is an FAQ to assist our customers in understanding the event.

The New Year often brings new projects. Rackspace customer, Gallant FX, has a huge 10 weeks ahead of them as they sponsor Boston Technologies’ “Man VS Machine” competition, which launches at the end of this month.

This ten week competition will simultaneously run thousands of automated trading systems (Machine) and manual trades (Man) to see who earns the most cash in the Foreign Exchange Market (Forex). Thousands of traders, developers, and trading bots will be running on Rackspace infrastructure to make this competition happen. Six winners will be selected, with prizes ranging from $5,000 to $50,000. Winners are determined by account balances from their fictitious trading accounts at the end of the competition.

The last day to sign up for the contest is January 10th, 2010. Visit http://www.manversusmachine.net/mvm/rulesm for more information! Once the competition goes live, viewers can track the top 10 contestants from the Web site.

Gallant FX, the sponsor of the competition, is a Foreign Exchange liquidity provider offering a wide range of trading technologies and services in a unique Forex trading environment. A recent case study highlights how Rackspace helped Gallant find a reliable home for their application. This video shows how Rackspace “came in swinging” for GallantFX.

Who is the favorite in this competition? Will it be Man or Machine? Only time will tell.

There’s been some local buzz in recent weeks on Rackspace that we are happy to share. Two pieces, in particular, include a recent news story on our San Antonio headquarters and the major Racker move-in as well as a piece from the San Antonio Express-News which mentions our role in cloud as well as our dedication to Fanatical Support.

Incident Overview:

On December 18, 2009 between 3:37 p.m. and 4:12 p.m. CST, Rackspace experienced network connectivity problems.  The issues resulted from a problem with a router used for peering and backbone connectivity located outside the data center at a peering facility, which handles approximately 20% of Rackspace’s Dallas traffic.  The problems stemmed from a configuration and testing procedure made at our new Chicago data center, creating a routing loop between the Chicago and Dallas data centers.  This activity was in final preparation for network integration between the Chicago and Dallas data centers.  The network integration of the facilities was scheduled to take place during the monthly maintenance window outside normal business hours, and today’s incident occurred during final preparations.

Incident Timeline:

3:37 p.m. CST Rackspace detected customer impacting connectivity issues; backbone engineering begins troubleshooting procedures.

4:02 p.m. CST Backbone engineers confirmed source of issue as Rackspace router housed at a peering location outside our datacenter facility.

4:12 p.m. CST-Upon rerouting traffic from this device, all systems were back online.

Current Status:

Rackspace is operating under normal conditions, and we do not anticipate any further connectivity interruptions.

This issue interrupted our customers’ businesses, and for this we apologize.  If you have additional questions. please reach out to us.

Editor’s Update on Dec. 19, 2009 at 12:00 p.m. :  An FAQ on this incident.

We had a network issue at a peering location outside our datacenter facilities. The network is back up. More details to come.

It’s new, our customers have been asking for it and today, it’s here! Rackspace is excited to offer our customers one consolidated invoice for a simpler way to pay their Rackspace bill. The Rackspace Consolidated Invoice is for existing Rackspace customers with both Hosting and Cloud accounts and allows them the convenience of one invoice for both services.  The Rackspace Consolidated Invoice is part of an initiative to unify and strengthen Rackspace across all products lines.

Enrolling is easy. Current customers with appropriate permissions can enroll in this program through the My.Rackspace.com customer portal.  After logging in, follow the link.

Editor’s Note:  This service is currently available only to U.S.-based customers.  U.K. customers can watch for this service later in 2010.

As 2009 winds to a close, businesses are considering ways in which to improve their operations and processes and maximize resources for the next year. We would like to invite you to join our complimentary webinar series that explores some of the most effective IT solutions available to businesses today.

“SharePoint 2010: A Sneak Peek at What’s New” webinar

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is expected to launch the first half of next year. As MS hosting experts, we’ll help you get a closer look at SharePoint 2010’s new features and key enhancements, as well as demonstrate how its functionality can improve collaboration and information management processes.  This webinar features Rackspace SharePoint Architect Jeff Deverter. Topics include: (read more…)

TechCrunch is the technology industry’s most influential media organization and when they make moves the implications can be deep. Recently TechCrunch moved to the Rackspace Cloud and TechCrunch’s CTO, Nik Cubrilovic, talked with building43’s host Robert Scoble about what the move’s implications were to traffic, uptime, peace of mind, and also costs. Across the board Nik praised Rackspace Cloud. In the interview Cubrilovic revealed that they moved from a company that was providing free hosting and are now paying to use Rackspace’s services.

Robert Scoble interviews Nik Cubrilovic from Rackspace Hosting on Vimeo.