* 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…)

We are sure happy to welcome GitHub to Rackspace. I have gotten to know the founders of GitHub over the last year, and there is no question this is a team and concept that the world should not ignore. We are excited to support them as they continue to deliver great services to the developer community.

It goes without saying that in reaching out to them one of my intentions was to get them on our cloud.

I was surprised to hear a few months later that they were eager to move to us, but they didn’t want cloud, they wanted primarily dedicated servers. Here is true leader of the new era of computing, a team born in the cloud era, and they wanted dedicated gear? What gives?

Well, here is how they describe it in their blog:

“We’ve grown to a size where it no longer makes sense to have every server virtualized. The benefits of running bare metal are obvious and have been empirically proven. We need to have the option to run bare metal when it is appropriate to the task at hand. We also need to be able to configure boxes with custom setups.”

There are really two cloud debates going on right now. One, is simply about the era of buying computing over the web vs. building it in house. This is what we call the cloud movement and it is real and has serious implications. We truly believe 99% of companies in the world can move faster, save money, and perform their IT better by using a computing partner. The next debate is about the specific tool now being called “Cloud.” These are pooled services, powered by software allowing for real time provisioning and very granular pay for use. We think of these as cloud technologies. All this jargon and cross talk has caused much confusion.

We think the Github decision is a great example to use to try to share our views on it. So:

One, we do think most companies going forward will buy computing not run it themselves. No capex, no inventory, no lock in. Github is not interested in having a DC and all the headaches that go with it. In fact, they have never really even considered that option (what startup today would?). We are discussing this movement daily on our site nomoreservers.com.

Two, while this strategy could be called using “the cloud” there is no doubt in our mind that companies will choose from a variety of services based on the workload they are dealing with. They will not just use Cloud technologies like our Cloud Servers or Amazon’s EC2. They will use traditional technologies as well as even higher level services, like SaaS. Why?

Well, here is how we think about it:

If you see these tools as a continuum of prescribed technology deliver on demand, they set up a series of trades. The trades are pretty simple:

The Github team faced this exact trade. As they grew, they needed the ability to customize every aspect of the stack by using physical machines. This is not to say they don’t believe in the Cloud technologies. Later in their post they say:

“On-demand access to a cloud infrastructure will be important to us as we increase the number and variety of low-frequency but long-running jobs that we process.”

The “Cloud” is a part of the computing strategy for Github. As it should be for any company. There are workloads where it is a perfect fit. Other workloads will need other tools. So, as the cloud era picks up steam, the discussion about all or nothing decisions of using one tool or another should be ignored. The key for any IT department is to figure out where the tools match their needs based on the workload they are deploying. Follow the lead of Github.

Looks like quite a few people are digging what we’re doing here @Rackcloud.

Recently, the web research shop InfiniBase wanted to know who the leader of the pack was in cloud providers.  The numbers hadn’t been run yet, so they examined more than 500,000 sites to discern what companies are in the cloud and which companies host them.   We are stoked that Rackspace is a “dominant” force in the cloud market.  The full article can be found here.

Over the past two years, Rackspace Hosting® has witnessed some exciting times. We went public at a time when no one thought any company could do it. We launched The Rackspace Cloud, and our Cloud Strategy. We also acquired three companies, including Mailtrust , Slicehost and Jungle Disk all focused on providing solutions complimentary to the Rackspace vision.

All amazing activities in a very short amount time, no matter how you look at it. Many of you may be asking why? Or wonder what Rackspace is up to and where the company is headed?

Well, I can’t answer all of those questions today, but I hope to provide you a glimpse into where we are headed. There are some changes you may have seen on Rackspace.com and additional changes regarding our product branding.

I am excited to announce as of today, all of our Managed, Cloud and Email hosted offerings will now live under the Rackspace brand. So moving forward Rackspace’s core brands will include Rackspace Managed Hosting, The Rackspace Cloud (Mosso) and Rackspace Email (formerly known as Mailtrust), all of which are of course backed by Fanatical Support.  

We have also integrated the navigation of our Web properties to make it easier for our customers to find the specific information relevant to their business needs. As you look over our web site, we hope you will find it easier to navigate and that information is presented in a more cohesive look and feel. We would love to hear your feedback.

While the brands are moving under one umbrella, we continue to believe in the power of small entrepreneurial teams focused on building world class offers, while also leveraging the resources and brain trust of the larger Rackspace community.  While total integration is not complete, we will be working to enhance that over time.

You will be hearing more from Rackspace in the coming weeks as we provide more details about our future. Keep an eye out for more on Rackspace.

Please feel free to provide us with your feedback and ask any questions you may have. We will take your feedback seriously and answer your questions promptly.

So, the big news is out: Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica are Rackers. And now, the big question is why?

Its pretty simple.  The world, the internet and Rackspace are all facing massive change.  The changes create huge opportunity, and we plan to embrace it.  When we realized Scoble and Rocky were open to collaborating, we could not resist getting them on board.  Who better to engage with the leaders of the new world, push us on our own evolution and help the whole internet think differently?

The change we all face is enormous. 

The internet is going in new directions.  Mobility is sparking a step function in demand.  The open web creates winners from frictionless partnerships they did not even see coming.  New approaches to getting and dealing with information are popping up daily. (read more…)

Erik Carlin wrote a great post on the Mosso blog comparing the cloud storage offerings from Rackspace (Cloud Files) and Amazon (S3). Here’s a quick excerpt:

The cloud is advantageous for many reasons and both Rackspace/Mosso and Amazon offer cloud storage solutions.  We are frequently asked to compare Cloud Files enabled with Limelight’s CDN with S3 and CloudFront.  Many of the questions we are asked revolve around cost and performance (particularly CDN).  These are very quantifiable metrics so I thought I’d share with you the results of some comparative analysis we’ve done.

Read the entire post here: A Quantitative Comparison of Rackspace and Amazon Cloud Storage Solutions

If you are interested in the cloud, you’ll want to join us on Wednesday, October 22 @ 12:00 pm CT for the Rackspace Cloud Event.

Rackspace and our cloud hosting division, Mosso, are holding a customer event and live webcast entitled ‘Live and Unplugged: A Conversation with Rackspace about Cloud Hosting and What’s Coming’.

We don’t do events like this often, but we’ve got some great stuff in the works and are excited to share the news with our friends.  The webcast and event will offer listeners the opportunity to hear strategic and product announcements from our managed and cloud hosting businesses about the future of the hosting cloud.

Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier and Chief Strategy Officer Lew Moorman, along with our partners and customers, will be on-hand to discuss emerging hosting trends.

Please join us for this exciting event via Webcast or in person from the historic KLRU studios on the Austin City Limits stage

Visit http://www.rackspacecloudevent.com for more information!

Today we announced the private beta of the much anticipated CloudFS, an Internet-based storage offering that was developed by Mosso and Racklabs. I’ve included a couple interesting excerpts from the press release below:

This file storage offering, CloudFS, allows developers to securely store a virtually unlimited amount of data on the web connected through Rackspace’s infrastructure. At the conclusion of the beta program, the new storage offering will be available as a stand-alone service or as part of Mosso’s cloud hosting solution at competitive storage, bandwidth and transaction pricing. In addition, Rackspace customers will benefit from free local transfers between CloudFS and their managed hosting servers. The ability to tie a scalable and low-cost storage engine to Rackspace’s customized managed hosting environment is unique in the hosting industry.

Mosso is seeking applicants to participate in a private beta program as well as encouraging developers to build tools and services around CloudFS. Developers and businesses interested in the private beta can visit www.mosso.com/cloudfs to apply starting May 5, 2008.

Pricing for CloudFS is strictly pay-for-what-you-use. Current plans target the pricing for storage to start at $0.15 per gigabyte, upon release, including replicated copies for data protection. This competitive rate allows developers to scale their storage-related projects seamlessly and affordably.

The storage platform will be accessed via a ReSTful web services API and language-specific API’s (.NET, Java, PHP, Ruby, Python). CloudFS will support language-specific libraries, giving customers confidence that they can quickly and easily store data and run applications in a business-class, standards-based environment.

Check out John Engates’ post on the Racklabs blog for an interesting behind the scenes look at the development of CloudFS.

As some of you may know, Google recently announced an application hosting offer called AppEngine. Our very own Lew Moorman discusses this, the whole ‘cloud computing’ angle, and Rackspace’s own cloud computing offering Mosso on the RackLabs blog. It’s a very good read. Check it out here.