The Rackspace Social Media Support Team lives by the ethos of “Be Helpful.” The team actively monitors social media networks for conversations about our products, services, or other areas where Rackers have subject matter expertise. When we find these conversations, we strive to provide prompt, accurate, and helpful responses.

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are the world’s top sales, contact center and customer service awards. The Stevie Awards organizes several of the world’s leading business awards shows including the prestigious American Business Awards^SM  and International Business Awards^SM. The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, which are judged by many of the leading figures in business, honor and “recognize the accomplishments of sales, customer service, call/contact center and sales professionals worldwide.”

The Social Media Support Team was examined by a panel of business professionals, which named it a silver award winner in the Front Line Customer Service Team of the Year, under the Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team category.

More than 1,100 entries from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted to this year’s competition, an increase of 10 percent over 2012.  Finalists were determined by the average scores of 120 professionals worldwide, acting as preliminary judges.  Entries were considered in 30 categories for customer service professionals, including Contact Center of the Year, Award for Innovation in Customer Service and Customer Service Department of the Year; 41 categories for sales professionals, ranging from Senior Sales Executive of the Year to Sales Training to Coaching Program of the Year to Sales Department of the Year of the Year; and categories to recognize new products, services and solution providers.

More than 100 members of eight specialized judging committees determined Stevie Award placements from among the finalists during final judging this year.

Want to see just how Fanatical the Rackspace Social Media Support Team is? Check out this video:

Social Media Support Team Delivering Cake to Awesome Racker

Mills, a Racker since 2010, has been a driving force in bringing Rackspace onto next-generation technologies. Through a program dubbed “Rack-on-Rack,” Mills and his team are moving many of Rackspace’s operational functions to the Rackspace open cloud in the same way that any large enterprise IT department might leverage Rackspace to offload commodity support activities in order to focus on business enablement. The Rack-on-Rack initiative goes well beyond eating our own dog food and will result in a much leaner IT shop that focuses on building and running Rackspace’s most critical applications. Through Rack-on-Rack, Rackspace expects to virtualize 80 percent to 90 percent of its more than 300 applications over the next 18 months, up from roughly 50 percent today.

The honorees on Computerworld’s Premier 100 list were announced last week. Now in its 14^th year, the Premier 100 IT Leaders program recognizes individuals who manage internal IT organizations; mentor and motivate their IT teams and business colleagues; create a positive work environment; envision innovative solutions to business challenges; and effectively manage and execute IT strategies.

“The Premier 100 awards program showcases the exceptional work of a dedicated group of senior IT leaders who are driving huge change in their organizations,” said Scot Finnie, editor in chief of Computerworld. “Every day, these exemplary business leaders make strategic technology decisions that track to their organizations’ top priorities. These men and women keep a keen eye on the changing landscape of political, economic, regulatory and technology trends that are driving significant shifts in IT. We are very pleased to recognize the leadership and achievements of the 2013 Premier 100 honorees.”

With the recognition, Mills joins 1,300 honoree alumni from classes dating back to the 2000. Mills will retain his Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leader designation throughout his career.

Congrats to Steve and many thanks to his IT team for all they do to make sure Rackspace’s IT runs smoothly!

Glassdoor, a jobs and career community, gives out the honor annually and relies solely on the input of employees, who elect to provide feedback on their job, work environment and company via Glassdoor’s anonymous online company review survey.

Close to half a million company reviews were submitted by employees to Glassdoor during the past 12 months to help put their employers in the running for the awards. The Glassdoor company review survey asks employees to rate their satisfaction with the company overall, and key workplace factors like career opportunities, compensation and benefits, work/life balance and senior management, as well as culture and values.

The list was compiled using Glassdoor’s proprietary algorithm, and the overall ranking was determined according to each company’s overall Glassdoor rating. For the purpose of this report, the overall rating is the cumulative average rating from U.S.-based employees who elected to participate in the survey between November 23, 2011 and November 13, 2012.

The complete list of the Glassdoor 2013 Top 50 Best Places to Work can be viewed at http://www.glassdoor.com/Best-Places-to-Work-LST_KQ0,19.htm.

And we hold in high esteem other companies that maintain a unique culture and focus on service. So when I had the opportunity to pay a visit to Zappos, I jumped at the chance.

Unless you have lived under a rock for the last 10 years, you know that Zappos is essentially the de facto method of buying shoes online. And like Rackspace, Zappos has become a fixture on lists of best places to work, recently clocking in at No. 11 on the 2012 edition of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Instead of keeping its secrets to success on lockdown, Zappos has a team dedicated to giving tours of its suburban Las Vegas headquarters, giving visitors insight into what makes it such an amazing place to work.

The tour, properly titled the “Zappos Insights Tours,” can be booked by visiting www.zapposinsights.com. If you plan ahead, the company also has vans that can pick you up and take you back from your hotel.

The Zappos Insights Tour van

My shuttle driver picked me up from my hotel around 12:30 p.m. for a 1 p.m. tour. He had another passenger in the van who he had picked up from the Cosmopolitan who was in town for a conference. The drive was short, maybe 10 to15 minutes, and filled with chatter about what we each did and why we were taking the tour.

My reason was simple: I come from a unique, culture-focused company and wanted a glimpse into how similar companies operate. So, part of my visit to Zappos was to see if I could observe some of the magic that goes on there and to see the similarities and differences between the cultures at Rackspace and Zappos.

When we arrived at Zappos HQ we were introduced to Rocco, our culture magician, who doubles as a tour guide. Rocco informed me that he’s had several people from Rackspace take the Zappos Insights Tour, though none recently. Rocco first showed us a video where we heard the Zappos story; then he took us around each department, weaving different points about what makes Zappos a unique workplace.

Some of the most interesting points were:

• Zappos has a life coach on staff who is not tied to human resources. Zapponians (did I spell that right?) are encouraged to discuss with her their goals and how to achieve them, whether they are work related or not. Rocco’s goal, for example, was to not feel like he had to eat the whole cake. When the goal is accomplished, they get to write an inspirational message on a stairwell wall.

Zappos’ Goals Wall

• The company compiles a Culture Book every year in which every employee contributes some nugget of insight. I received a copy the book and it’s been hard to put down. I’m fascinated by how Zappos manages to get each employee to submit something without having to be forced or coerced.

• There’s a whole world of people out there whose sole responsibility at Zappos, or any shoe vendor, is to procure big and small shoes. And by big, I don’t mean my size 13s; I mean like this 22EEE (I think that was the size). I wish I had something to scale it against.

That’s a big shoe you got there.

If your corporate culture has got you down, you should definitely consider taking the Zappos Insights Tour to see if there’s anything you can do to make it better. Even if you have an awesome culture like Rackspace, taking the tour will reinforce that in the end culture eats strategy for lunch.

The event promises to “give attendees a comprehensive and unbiased understanding of all the latest innovations—including cloud computing, virtualization, security, mobility and data center advances—that help position your company for growth.”

Well, that sounds like it’s right up Rackspace’s alley, doesn’t it?

Rackspace will have three speaking sessions and several appearances at Interop Las Vegas this year, including a spot on a keynote panel moderated by tech evangelist Alistair Croll. Rackspace CTO John Engates will join the panel, dubbed “Clouds and the Enterprise: Revolution, Evolution, or More of the Same?” along with  Ellen Rubin, vice president of cloud products at Terremark, and Steven Shalita, vice president of marketing at NetScout. The panel takes place at 8:15 a.m. Wednesday, May 9.

In addition to the keynote panel, Rackspace Advisory Services Manager Arrian Mehis will discuss hybrid cloud architectures on Wednesday, May 9 at 2:15 p.m. Mehis also appears on cloud panels on Sunday and Monday during the Enterprise Cloud Summit portion of Interop.

Meanwhile, OpenStack Developer Advocate Wayne Walls discusses open source in the enterprise on Tuesday, May 8 at 12:15 p.m.

As part of expo floor activities, Rackspace will bring the Rackstream out of its secret hiding location so it can dazzle on the Mandalay Bay Convention Center show floor. The inside the Rackstream will be a photobooth so visitors can have their pictures taken with fun signs and take home as a souvenir.

We will also have a lounge for customers and partners to stop by, take a load off and visit with us.

Are you visiting Interop Las Vegas this year? Swing by and say hello to our hard-working booth staff!

Rackspace in-booth demos at Interop Las Vegas 2012:

Tuesday, May 8
11:00a-11:30p – OpenStack Private Clouds – Supported by Rackspace
12:00p-12:30p – Next Generation Rackspace Cloud
1:00-1:30p – RackConnect: The Power of Hybrid Hosting
2:00-2:30p – Managed Private Cloud: Virtualized by VMware
3:00-3:30p – Advisory Services: From Vision to Reality

Wednesday, May 9
11:00a-11:30p – Managed Private Cloud: Virtualized by VMware
12:00p-12:30p – Advisory Services: From Vision to Reality
1:00-1:30p – Next Generation Rackspace Cloud
2:00-2:30p – RackConnect: The Power of Hybrid Hosting
3:00-3:30p – OpenStack Private Clouds – Supported by Rackspace

Thursday, May 10
11:00a-11:30a – RackConnect: The Power of Hybrid Hosting
12:00p – 12:30p – Next Generation Rackspace Cloud
1:00p-1:30p – OpenStack Private Clouds – Supported by Rackspace

All times mentioned are in PDT unless otherwise stated