Rackers all over the country are gearing up for the third annual Thanksgiving Food Drive. In November of 2008, Rackers were able to collect enough food to feed 500 San Antonio families, 25 Virginia families, 35 Austin families, and 60 families in the DFW area. All together, Rackspace joined together to support 620 families in need. This was a huge accomplishment and Rackers rallied together to achieve this goal.

This year, our goal for San Antonio is to feed 750 needy local families – 800 company wide, including all locations. Throughout 2009, the need for food has grown to the highest level since the “food security” report began in 1995. 1 in 7 Americans struggles to get enough to eat, and more than a third go hungry from time to time. An estimated 36.2 million Americans are food insecure. Of those 36 million, almost 13 million are children and 2 million are seniors. Last year, over 25 million people used a Food Bank for emergency food assistance. Our goal may be ambitious, but the need for food is growing.

On Friday, November 20th Rackers in San Antonio will be assembling 750 food baskets. Austin Rackers will be distributing food collected to needy families through the Capital Area Food Bank. On Saturday, November 21st, San Antonio Rackers will be distributing all boxes to needy families to benefit the San Antonio Food Bank.

See below for pictures of last year’s food drives:

For more information on hunger in the United States, click here.

This week Rackspace launched No More Servers, a call for businesses to stop buying servers and instead buy services from a hosting provider. The campaign launches on the heels of the Q3 earnings call that shows businesses are indeed responding to hosting as a way to maximize resources and talent.

No More Servers points to the breadth of hosting services that Rackspace offers – Managed, Cloud and Email & Apps. Hosting allows businesses to avoid massive upfront investments in hardware as well as the extensive amount of time and cost spent deploying and managing servers. It also shields companies from making inaccurate capacity predictions and poor purchase decisions, which exposes them to the risk of limited computing resources or financial waste. (read more…)

Today, Rackspace shared survey results revealing the growing problem of businesses struggling to cope with the demands of managing their own servers. The study, conducted by LoudHouse on behalf of Rackspace, investigated the views of more than 441 IT managers at mid-size enterprises and revealed that approximately one third of their IT staff’s time is spent on server management, which could limit their ability to focus on strategic initiatives that could benefit the business.

The survey revealed some interesting stats:

Selfish Servers Demand IT Director Time
IT teams reported spending 60 percent of their time troubleshooting and managing servers, while only 27 percent of time is spent on strategic and value-add activities.

Poor Purchasing is Problematic
More than half (51 percent) of respondents have made mistakes in their server capacity planning. Fifteen percent have bought too many servers and 36 percent have failed to buy enough.

Attitudes toward Cloud Computing
Thirty five percent of companies identify themselves as ‘proactive and slightly ahead of the curve’ when it comes to describing their approach to new technologies, while 28 percent remain ‘cautious and reactive.’

* The following article recently appeared in Newsweek Japan.
Tech enthusiasts, executives and investors are always looking for the next big, disruptive technology, and they appear to have found it in cloud computing. The movement of IT hardware and software out of offices and factories and onto the web promises to deliver huge cost savings, create new business models, and threaten incumbent technologies and the global corporations that deliver them.

As with any ballyhooed tech revolution, this one is generating lots of hype and smoke. But there’s real fire underneath this trend. Companies already are using the cloud to save money and become more efficient and creative. Wider adoption of cloud computing will lead to a new burst of productivity in the world economy, including in ways not yet widely appreciated. (read more…)

Today, Lanham Napier, Rackspace’s president and CEO, was featured on CNBC sharing some thoughts about technology and customer service:

Napier: The New Edge in Tech
By: Lanham Napier, CEO, Rackspace US

Things go wrong in computing. Anyone who uses a laptop knows that. It doesn’t matter whether the computer hardware and software you use are located in your home or office, or miles away in the data center of a hosting company that allows businesses to buy computing services cheaply by the hour, the way they buy electricity. Things go wrong either way. Why is it, then, that so many of the sellers of computer hardware and software and hosting blame their customers and hide from them whenever there’s a major service glitch?

To continue reading the entire article, please follow this link.

Rackspace has experienced a service interruption during tonight’s scheduled maintenance on UPS Cluster G. We were testing phase rotation on a Power Distribution Unit (PDU) when a short occurred and caused us to lose the PDUs behind this Cluster. The phase rotation allows us to verify synchronization of power between primary and secondary sources.

All power has been restored and devices are being brought back online. The PDUs were down for a total of about 5 minutes. We have aborted the maintenance for the remainder of the evening and will reschedule this for another date.

Service to Cloud sites has been restored and we are continuing to work with Cloud sites customers to bring them online. We will continue to update the Cloud Server and Slicehost status on their respective websites, which you can access through these links:  Cloud Status and Slicehost Status.

If you have any questions please feel free to contact a member of your support team.

Sincerely,

Rackspace

On Friday, October 30th, Rackspace hosted the first ever Community Halloween Festival! Along with face painting, a pumpkin patch, bobbing for apples, pumpkin painting, and a huge obstacle course, Rackspace also created a child-friendly Haunted House made up of Racker “actors” – children were able to see mummies, werewolves, vampires, and witches. The entire event was free with a canned donation benefiting the San Antonio Food Bank.

See below for pictures of the event:

For more pictures, check out our Flickr Photo stream here.

Making eCommerce more secure and trustworthy for customers is a common concern for businesses with an eRetail component. Ensuring that your site will be able to handle fluctuating traffic is a second concern. If those sound like common dilemmas experienced by your business, we want to talk with you during the Dallas Road Show on November 5, 2009 at the House of Blues!

Rackspace Solutions Engineer Gregg Stout and Rackspace partner VeriSign will talk about eCommerce and the ways that businesses can effectively support this area of revenue generation. The topic is “Defining Security and Reliability within your eCommerce Infrastructure.”

We will also discuss topics such as the typical environment needed for eCommerce, security considerations required for compliance, and scaling a solution to handle changing volumes of traffic.

All Dallas Road Show events are free, fun and informative. We hope to see you there!

“Defining Security and Reliability within your eCommerce Infrastructure”

A Rackspace Road Show Event

November 5, 2009

4:30pm – 6:30pm

House of Blues

2200 N. Lamar Street, Dallas, Texas

To register for this event* or to see other topics during the Dallas Road Show, click here or call toll free: 888-571-8963.

*Please register for the Rackspace eCommerce event by November 4, 2009.

NewTek, a manufacturer of industry-leading video and 3-D animation products, today drove inside the walls of Rackspace’s remodeled mall to unveil the production company’s miniature live TV high definition production vehicle.

Rackers were treated to an up-close, personal look at one of the world’s first, and smallest, live TV high definition (HD) production vehicles. NewTek provides producers and artists with cost-effective and groundbreaking technologies. The company is a leader in portable live production, video editing, 3D animation and special effects tools, including the TriCasterTM product line, 3PLAYTM and LightWave 3D®.  You might have seen their products at work in blockbuster movies “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man,” “300,” and “Hancock” and in TV shows such as “Lost,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and “Fringe.”

During the unveiling, Rackers witnessed the TriCaster and 3PLAY products which included the XD300 HD portable live production system and customized MINI Cooper®.  The vehicle is part of NewTek’s TriCastsTM America Tour, sponsored by Canon U.S.A., Inc. and TodoCastTM.

Check out the event video:

One Tricked Out MINI!

The miniature HD studio-on-wheels includes a multi-camera switcher, network-style virtual sets, full HD streaming, slow motion replay system, titling station, audio mixer, three camera ISO recorder, video editing, 3D motion graphics system and more. For the NewTek TriCasts America Tour, all HD cameras are provided by Canon and the satellite system for streaming distribution is provided by TodoCast.

The cross-country tour will hit major U.S. cities from October 27 through November 17, 2009. The Mini HD unit will be in front of The Alamo on Thursday, October 22 from 10 to noon. To attend one of the events and see the live demo, sign up at www.StreamOrDie.com/attend.php.

For more information about the tour/demos, click on the following links:

• Link to tour info: StreamorDie
• Link to NewTek site and product demos: http://www.newtek.com/
• Follow NewTek on Twitter: @NewTekInc
• On Facebook: NewTek’s Fan Site
• Photos of NewTek’s visit to Rackspace:  Flickr

UPDATE: The Extra Life marathon was a huge success. Extra Life is still pulling in the donations, but so far they have surpassed their total from last year and have eclipsed the $140,000 mark. And The Rackspace Gaming Team had a great time doing their part. Here is the info to the money they raised so far.

Gaming for 24 straight hours can be pretty tough. Rack Gives Back helped out by donating food and snacks to keep the players energized. Still, the last few hours were pretty tough and not everyone made it, but that’s okay. The live stream was a great addition to the Rackspace Team and had up to 70 viewers online. Even a local high school student found the stream, chatted with the team and actually hopped in the public server played some CounterStrike:Source with the team.

The Rackspace Team played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Quakelive.com, Left 4 Dead, Counter Strike:Source, Prototype, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Madden, Assassin’s Creed, World of Warcraft and finished out the live stream with a wicked game of Solitaire.

So thanks to everyone who donated or contributed to this good cause!

This weekend, 15 Rackers will participate in Extra Life, a 24-hour gaming marathon to fund pediatric cancer research and treatment. Extra Life partners with the Texas Children’s Hospital and all donations are given to the Texas Children’s Cancer Center.

Extra Life was founded by Houston-native Jeromy ‘Doc’ Adams and last year (just the first year) they raised more than $120,000 from every continent except Antarctica.

So Rackers formed the ‘Rackspace Gaming Team’ this year to do their part. Their team goal is to raise $2,842. Donations start at $1 an hour. Starting at 8 a.m. CST Saturday, Oct. 17 and ending 24 hours later, these Rackers will be up all day and night playing various games on X-Box, Playstation and the PC to include Madden, Call of Duty and Age of Empires. Best of all, Rackers have set up a site to stream their marathon live so anyone can tune in and check on their progress.

So if you’d like to help by donating, just go here and make sure to check out the Rackspace Gaming Team stream this weekend.